Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Cathal McNaughton, from Cushendall, captures normal, day-to-day life in war-torn Ukraine

This poignant photograph, which juxtaposes the workaday against the extraordinary, is one of a series by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Cathal McNaughton, entitled ‘Ukraine – Searching for the Normal’, which is currently on display at the Belfast Exposed gallery.

The collection of photographs capture the resilience of daily life against the backdrop of brutal war, delivering comfort in the continuity of the mundane.

In another image a little girl with plaits plays on a scooter as tanks loom behind her; in another, a fence is painted with pretty flowers, their centres, bullet holes. Rather than the destruction and tragedy of war, he celebrates the beauty, colour, and poetry of social life in wartime Ukraine, a life that remains under serious threat from Russian attacks.

Cushendall man Cathal, 46, who is managing editor of EPA Images, one of the leading providers of international news, sports, and entertainment photography, hadn’t planned to capture any images when he visited Ukraine last September.

“One of our bureaus is in Ukraine and I wanted to go out there to help organise our coverage of the war and to see what things were like on the ground and meet some of our photographers face-to-face. I spent two weeks driving all over Ukraine. I wasn't there to take to take photographs. I was there in a managerial role. But as soon as I landed on the ground, as a photographer myself, I found it impossible not to document what was happening.

“Once I got there I decided that because I’d been on similar assignments before and I’ve shot the harsh realities of famine and war and genocide, and also because I was dealing with pictures from Ukraine for a long time at that point, I felt that there needed to be a new way to show what was happening to get people to engage with the story again, because people get compassion fatigue…. you see all these shocking images and you just turn off, you don't even notice it anymore. I figured that the way to get people to engage with the story and to engage with the photographs was to photograph people going about their normal everyday routines, but it was far from normal as somewhere in the frame you can see that war is present.

"The images encourage people to engage with the pictures, and therefore the story, a little more than maybe just a cursory glance because you're so used to seeing pain and devastation.”

As a photographer and a chronicler of people’s lives, it is vital, he says, that he too feels emotion and empathy.

“I think that comes across in your images. It also allows you to communicate with your subjects on a slightly deeper level. I find it's essential to the way I work as a photojournalist to try and engage with the subject as much as possible. I think if you're actually dealing with people on a one-to-one basis, they can figure out very quickly if you actually mean what you're saying or if you're there just to just to exploit them.”

We have all seen the TV coverage of the war in Ukraine, the destruction and tragedy it has caused, and the serious threat Russian attacks still pose, so did he ever fear for his own safety whilst criss-crossing the country?

“There were times when I was cautious, but I wasn't in the trenches at any point. Any risks that I had taken were calculated risks. At no point was I dodging any bullets, but there would be better places to visit. Let's just say I was close as I needed to be that I could hear the bombs going off.”

Cathal embarked on a career in photography when he was 16.

“It was for no other great reason than I was given the opportunity to train as a photographer. I wasn't really interested in it at the start. It was just a way of doing something without having to continue my education because I didn't enjoy school and school didn’t enjoy me.

"But then photography became an obsession very, very quickly because I realised I did enjoy it and it was an outlet for me because I was always artistic. My apprenticeship was in Belfast at the tail end of the troubles. So, unfortunately there was ample opportunity to to get hands -on experience in hostile environments."

When he’s not officially working, he attempts to switch off and not take photographs, but adds, ”You can never switch off from this job once you start it – you don’t finish it until you retire.”

Cathal’s lens has previously captured the world’s attention with his photographic chronicles of the plight of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar and with ‘Kashmir: Valley of Tears’, as previously showcased at Belfast Exposed. These bodies of work earned him the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Photography in 2018. It’s something he is happily humble about, despite being the only person from Ireland ever to win the prestigious accolade.

“To be honest, I'm pretty low-key about these things. It's an honour that people would even find my story interesting enough that they would want to document it. It's a legacy thing. It was something that is nice to share with my son and my family.”

Sadly, Cathal’s father passed away recently, but he did see the Ukrainian photographs.

“I shared most of my stuff with him, so he was aware of the pictures and he knew the exhibition was coming up. He would have been to it if he had been around but unfortunately that wasn't the case, but he's ever present in my thoughts. I was the subject of a documentary that came out last year (I Dream in Photos by the film-makers Ollie Aslin and Gary Lennon). My father actually got to feature on it. That's a lovely memory to have because we're both there on film and he got to see it in the cinema.”

On what makes a good photograph, Cathal says: “I think it's maybe like any piece of art, it’s something that is emotive and creates a response, either positive or negative, from the person that's looking at it. As a photojournalist, it's important for me that the photograph actually tells the story of the subject that's in it without using any words.”

Cathal has travelled all over the world to take photographs. “There's different countries have stood out for different reasons, for good reasons and bad reasons. There's a couple of places that just have blown my mind with the sheer beauty of the place and one of them was Bhutan, which was quite amazing, and Leh in north west India. Closer to home I would say Greece has a very special place in my heart. I spent a long time there covering the economic collapse of the country. It’s somewhere that I really, really love.”

He says travelling is one of his passions and photography has allowed him to indulge in that.

"That's probably one of the reasons why it became an obsession so quickly because it gives me the opportunity to travel to all these amazing places and document what I see. There are many, many places I would like to go. I would really love to photograph the Sami reindeer herders. That is on my to-do list.”

With his superlative talents as a skilled and empathetic visual storyteller, it’s not surprising that the Glens man is considering publishing his work in book format.

“I'd like to write a book. I have two notions. I would very much like to do a book on my images throughout my career. But I would also like to write my memoir, because I've lots of interesting stories. “