Oleh, a "Life on the move" from Ukraine to Rome, flying on a skateboard
"Life on the move" from Ukraine to Rome: how soaring on a skateboard helps Oleh rebuild a new life
He loves the speed of skateboarding and that feeling when jumping in mid-air. For him, it well represents life and the speed of change we experience every day. It is through a skateboard that Oleh, 16, originally from Kharkiv, Ukraine, finds his smile again in Rome.
He left Ukraine just a month after the conflict began. He had long wanted to get to know Italy, where his mother moved a few years earlier, but he certainly never planned it or thought it would happen so soon.
It all happened that night in late February. Around 5 a.m. Oleh hears the sound of air raids in nearby towns. He spends a few days in a bunker with relatives and acquaintances. He has with him only an emergency briefcase, where he puts very few things; he did not believe that the war would really begin. In the last few days he had been interviewed by a journalist and had said exactly those words. Yet everything around him was changing. Oleh photographs a tank right next to his house, that vision worries him. So, a few days later he leaves everything to join his Mother in Italy.
It is in a park near the Cestia Pyramid in Rome that Oleh trains every day. He remembers the moment he arrived, having left everything behind. With the first money he is able to save up, he immediately buys a skateboard. This sport helps the boy rebuild life in a new city, meet new friends. "For me skateboarding is movement," he recounts, "just like life.”
Oleh loves photography. His shots include his skateboarder friends, but also graffiti and street art, "which," he says, "make the streets more colourful”.
Among his favorite photos is one of a train. He is struck by the gray space colored by graffiti. To him, it symbolizes life moving forward.
Oleh is one of 16 teenagers and young people who participated in the photography workshop organized by UNICEF in collaboration with photographer Giacomo Pirozzi. Through the shots, which became part of the "Lives on the Move" photo exhibition, he described his past in his homeland, the present made up of rapid changes and an uncertain future, but all to be built.
