The first images in the Giant project were inspired by the Covid restrictions. The breakdown of communication, the disintegration of established communication ties, isolation and loneliness - all this became an incentive to pick up the camera and plunge into self-reflection in these forcedly abnormal and harsh conditions. With the relaxation of the regime, the spatial horizons of studying my non-trivial body naturally opened up before my lens. As a result, it all turned into a kind of adventure, a journey of the body; the Big Body. I tried to turn the mise-en-scene of the story into a mythological realm; into a story about the life of some legendary giants.
If I try to define the genre of the project, it will be difficult because of its hybridity and blurring. In fact, it is a self-portrait, but in an entourage, including landscapes. The unique quality of the project is its everyday life. Thanks to this diffuseness, the study of the inner world becomes as important as the visual delineation and construction of the outer world. The merging, not the opposition of these worlds gives "Giant" its harmonious naturalness, integrity and figurative appeal.
In my photographs I am always naked, because for me the body is always sincerity and openness, and I want to be as honest as possible with the viewer. The attitude to the naked body, say, in ancient times (art historians even have such a concept as "heroic nudity of a mature man"), or in our era of total and flattering selfies, Instagram exhibitionism, unrestrained demonstration of fitness beauty, series like "I'm Ashamed of My Body", "Weighted and Happy", of course, are very different. Today it is hard to surprise or stun anyone in this bodily flow. And I save myself by not striving for this, but by trying to be sincere and honest. This somewhat "Rabelaisian" approach gives rise to self-irony and a state of "unarmed nakedness," as the German journalist Peter-Mattias Gaede aptly called it, which can attract the viewer's attention and arouse his or her increased interest due, paradoxically, to its simplicity, unpretentiousness, and organicity. At the
same time, I try to do this without the help of accompanying bodily sexuality. It is absent in my project; the question of the body is exhausted by the body as such. An experienced viewer will rather have connotations from the history of art, in particular contemporary art, where the line of the hyperbolized body shape is clearly manifested: the Flemish Rubens and Jordaens, the Colombian Botero, the British Lucien Freud, the Ukrainian Lesya Khomenko with her picturesque cycle "Giants".
In "Giants," the large form prevails. The figures seem to be sculptural, emphasized three-dimensional. Their relief seems to be implanted in a 2D picture, inside it. The project, which includes more than a hundred subjects, shows different approaches to shooting on location. There are relaxed, even spontaneous ones, and more structured, theatrical ones. The color scheme is also different: from more restrained, based on closer color combinations, to brighter and more colorful. Despite the full presence of the monohero, I believe there is no monotony in the project also because it unexpectedly combines comedy and sadness, naivety and seriousness, logical reasoning and absurdity.
The giant awakens empathy with his spontaneity and openness. And if a portrait of a person is their story, then the space around the object builds its meaning.
Another distinctive feature of the project is its acute involvement in the events in Ukraine; the spirit of the times is very insightfully conveyed. And it's not even about direct patriotism, when, for example, the colors of the national flag are used in several photographs, but about suspense, anxious expectation and anticipation, which literally permeate the mood of the project. I think it is quite natural that I completed my project as soon as the full-scale invasion began. The war greatly influenced the future life of the project, inevitably changing and adding new tones to its current perception.
