Artist and journalist Nora Krug initiated an extraordinary diary project in which she depicts the daily lives of people caught up in the Ukraine war. Each week, an episode appeared in newspapers around the world. Meanwhile, there is a book.
She could have continued drawing diary episodes in newspapers for quite some time. The decision to stop was not easy, says Nora Krug (1977). There is some regret in her voice, because the end of the war in Ukraine was at the publication of her book Diaries of War, Two visual accounts from Ukraine and Russia sadly still a long way off. And still not. Recently, the terrible milestone of '1,000 days of war' was reached.
Diary excerpts
Right from the start of the war, she knew she didn't just want to stand idly by. She wanted to do something meaningful. An illustrator and visual journalist, she contacted a journalist in Kyiv, who was willing to provide her with diary entries. As a counterpart, she found an artist in St Petersburg. "Both agreed immediately," says Krug, who used these real stories to depict daily life during the war.
In her characteristic handwriting, they are accompanied by texts. They are excerpts taken from the diaries, Krug explains: "The voices of two individuals who reacted differently to the war." Anonymous, because of the protagonists' safety. They are referred to in the cartoon as K. and D. D., the Russian, had a particularly hard time. As an opponent of the war, he was in inner conflict and asking himself philosophical questions.
The episodes appeared weekly. To begin with, the drawings were printed in the Los Angeles Times, but you could also follow the events in other newspapers and magazines around the world. Some of them can still be found in Dutch on the Volkskrant website.
Hyperactive
There was pace behind the series, Krug explains when she talks about the genesis of her book in Berlin at the Internationales Literatur Festival (ILB). With a special 'Graphic Novel Day', the ILB highlights graphic journalism and literature. Like many other forms of journalism, the creation process of the drawn genre has to do with time constraints. Krug: "It was hyper-actual and everything went very fast. On Saturday or Sunday I would write an email to find out how things were going. I usually had some set questions. 'What all happened? Did you have any interesting conversations?' Thursday at 3pm was always the deadline, the next day it was in the paper, and then the day after, at the weekend, it started all over again."
The drawings in soft pastel tones have something lovely about them, which works almost insidiously against the harsh reality of war. But it also illustrates the personal nature of the situation where the beauty of the drawing creates an interesting distance. It provides the narrative setting that fuels the reader's empathy. "The drawn image has the power to provide a different view of reality," says Krug.
Self-reflection
Her previous books also present quirky views on war and how to relate to it. With Heimat earned her international acclaim in 2018. It made an impression, for its candour about her family in World War II. About Tyranny, the book by Timothy Snyder that was made into a graphic edition with Krug, can be seen as a guide to recognising tyrannical situations and how to combat them. Reason also why Krug conceived her graphic journalism plan fairly soon after Russia's attack on Ukraine.
One of Snyder's exhortations: take responsibility and learn from history. "Are we doing enough against the AfD, against Trump?", Krug suddenly wonders aloud during her lecture at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele. It is not just a mirror she holds up to her audience, her approach also has to do with self-reflection.
Time document
Diaries of War - published in German under the title Im Krieg - thus ties in with themes that Krug has long dealt with. "It has become a documentation of the first year of the war," she states, looking back on it. "Newspapers generally concentrate more on the military event. My idea was to outline the thoughts of two people."
The result is a powerful period document that gives insight into the everyday of war from different perspectives in an inspiring and penetrating way.
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