I was born in 2001 in Kharkiv. I started engaging in photography in 2013, when I
was about 12 years old. During this time, I feel as though I never let the
camera out of my hands, and as a result, I now have over ten years of continuous
photographing of the same thing – the world. In the last two to three years, my
achievements have gained momentum: I participated in music concerts, more than
20 exhibitions – both collective and solo worldwide, as well as publications in
photo albums and magazines. While studying cultural studies at Kharkiv
University of Karazin, I worked as a curator for exhibitions. My first
publication in a prestigious foreign magazine happened in 2022 in New York
Magazine. My first solo exhibition also took place in 2022, with the project "In
Search of Home" – a story about my family's evacuation during the shelling in
Kharkiv at the Dziga art space. Besides photography, I pursue a career in
cinematography and have already received several awards from prestigious
Ukrainian organizations: a diploma for my work at the Golden Frame Film Festival
in Kharkiv in 2021 and a win for "Best Cinematography" from the Media
Development Foundation for the film "The Lily of the Valley Gatherer" in 2023.
Now, let me finally tell you about myself:
For nine years now, I've been consistently taking the same photograph, the same
portrait. The same picture of light, darkness, colors, stories, life in the
shadows or in the sun, summer or winter – it doesn't matter. I capture
uniqueness, fleetingness, incredible beauty, searching for feelings within it –
and this search becomes more hopeless over time. I often envy those who can take
good pictures. I run away from photography, I start from scratch, I capture
emptiness, I find stories that are rarely told, I find situations that exist
because I'm another person in the frame.
Here's something to think about with me. The work of a photographer consists
only of what is captured in 1/200 of a second. And this involves hundreds of
photos taken at 1/25 or 1/500 (or even 1/1000) of a second. A thousand photos
make up an entire volume, but all of them together amount to just one second,
maybe a minute of life – a minute in which stories converge, embedding hundreds,
thousands of plots and moments. One could say that the entirety of a
photographer’s life is represented by a few minutes during which all his
pictures were taken. Hundreds of famous and less famous pictures together amount
to just a few minutes – a photographer's life! Even for a great photographer!
And these minutes encapsulate his life, his story, perhaps a smile, doubts, and
the joy of photography.
