Women Photojournalists: Victoria Markovna Ivleva-York

Photograph of Victoria Ivleva by Victoria Ivleva

Victoria Markovna Ivleva-York is a Russian photojournalist and activist that was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Very little else is known about her early life, which might be due to privacy reasons considering she is still alive and active today.

At some point, she moved from Saint Petersburg to Moscow, where she would graduate from the Journalism Department of Moscow State University.

As well as being a photojournalist, Ivleva is also an activist. She has traveled extensively within and outside the then-Soviet Union, from Central Asia to Africa, to photograph people being affected by disaster or violence.

On April 26th, 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred. Ivleva, who had been in Chernobyl just  days after the accident, returned a couple years later on January 1st, 1991, as the first journalist to photograph the destroyed fourth reactor. According to her own statement on RFERL.org, "...she was able to enter the fourth reactor thanks to physicists she befriended. It wasn't about pulling connections, she says. 'Connections and friendship are two different things.'" 

 Considering how the Soviet Union tried to cover up and downplay Chernobyl initially, it was unsurprising that at the time only a few of Ivleva's pictures were published within the Soviet Union while the full spread was published internationally. Only recently were the rest allowed to be published in what's now Russia.

Photo by Victoria Ivleva, 1/1/1991

 A year later, in 1992, that series of photos would win Ivleva a World Press Photo of the Year award in the Science and Technology category.

A few years later, in the summer of 1994, Ivleva called the Ministry of Emergency Situations to join the Russian effort to send humanitarian aid to Rwanda. She was initially denied, with the cited reason in an interview with the Moscow Times reportedly being that "...the minister told them not to take women because it was too dangerous...". Ivleva was forced to pull connections to meet with the minister himself and make her request, which was granted.

The reasoning Ivleva was initially given for why she couldn't go to Rwanda is notable because of the citation of her being a woman.Specifically, it was phrased in a way that implied the situation was dangerous for women in particular. Why? Would it not be equally or at least just as dangerous to send any other capable adult?

There is a perception that hasn't been totally shaken yet that women are incapable of taking care of themselves in dangerous situations. That they must be protected and sheltered from those scenarios. It is part of a larger and lingering social stigma against acknowledging and letting women have autonomy, especially when it comes to defending themselves. An aspect of this can be seen in the military, where women were barred from combat positions for a long time. In the United States specifically, brookings.edu states that, "Notably, it was only in the Obama years that all combat positions, including in the ground forces, were open to [women]... But while the U.S. military today has never had a higher fraction of women, they remain just 16 percent of the total force."

Photo by the US Army, 3/7/13

 While there is an argument that women would be at higher risk of sexual assault when in volatile and dangerous situations, that it's "worse" than just being physically assaulted would depend on the person as photographer Lynsey Addario points out in an interview with cpj.org, saying "Who can qualify what’s worse? Who has the right to say what’s worse? For me, when I was getting groped, I was listening to them... get smashed on the head... It was horrible for all of us. I don’t understand why this is so much worse for me? Is it because I’m a woman? I don’t know who has the answer to that question."

In Rwanda, Ivleva's priority was volunteer work over photography. She stated in that same interview with the Moscow Times that "A good photograph is nothing in comparison with saving a person’s life…" Her words do beg the question if it is possible to be a good photojournalist without being some sort of activist. What kind of person goes to photograph people fighting for their rights or survival and doesn't feel compelled to help or participate? A similar sentiment was expressed by African-American photojournalist Vanessa Charlot on her Instagram, saying in the caption of her photo series of George Floyd's funeral that "So many times I had put my camera down and fist up because I too am a black woman in America and mother to a black son."

Photo by Victoria Ivleva, 1994

After that initial trip to Rwanda, Ivelva would return to Africa around five or six times.

Ivleva is also notable for her support of Ukraine and opposition to Russia's treatment of Ukraine, elaborating in her Moscow Times interview that "If we had a normal government, the first thing we’d do would be to stop the war, get down on our knees before them for what we did to them, pay them reparations, and ask them for forgiveness…" . 

After the Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov was arrested in Crimea in 2014, Ivleva was at Pushkin Square to call for his release. She also helped feed the Ukrainian sailors held in Lefortovo when they were arrested by Russia in the Kerch Strait incident of November 2018.

Ivleva has also run into obstacles when she tries to do photojournalism on specific topics like giving birth. In an article from Bird In Flight, she mentions how when she posted that particular project on Facebook, "...for some reason it has attracted the incredible attention of the puritan or even antiphotographic and scary forces... Is it time to start a larger professional conversation about it? ...about those who can’t tell porn from documentary photography..." It is part of a larger problem where people can't separate women from sexual contexts, like when photojournalist Mimi Fuller Foster was met with "You must be the reason we had to take the Playboy calendars off the wall" by her male colleagues in an article by ajr.org.

Some of her more recent activist work in November of 2021 saw her conducting a single-person protest in Moscow to support Russia's oldest human rights organization, Memorial, which was being threatened with potential closure. Unfortunately, she was detained and fined 150,000 rubles for repeated violation of Russia's law on public gatherings in an article from rferl.org.

According to her Facebook page, she moved to Kyiv in 2022 and has lived there ever since.