fine art photographer of the year

Winter 2013 changed Ukraine.

3 months of bloody clashes, tears, fear, Molotov cocktails, burning car tires and deaths. It already wasn’t just a protest in the support of EU. Ukrainian revolution brought new spirit, changed people and their minds, they became one organism that fight with a great passion and intensity for happy future.

From the very beginning Euromaidan turned into a real performance, where started the battle of opposites. Good and evil, light and shadow, thick black smoke and whiteness of the February snow, orange helmets against black. On the revolutionary canvas creepy bloody scenes interwove with incredibly beautiful, from visually side, views. Euromaidan became one of the most beautiful revolutions, like scenes from Hollywood film.

In my photos I tried to show the scale of all that happened in the centre of the country. Very often I lost the line between reality and fiction. I forgot the place, time and the cause of what was happening. In one moment the battle scenes reminded terrible days of the previous wars. In another - frosty, fiery battle turned Maidan Nezalezhnosty into a phantasmagoric place. Carefree, obstreperous Kyiv completely lost its familiar features.

Maxim Dondyuk (Ukraine, 1983) is a visual artist working with documentary photography, based in Kyiv. Since 2010 he is a freelancer, works on his own documentary projects. In 2011 Maxim received Noor-Nikon Masterclass in Documentary Photography in Bucharest.

Maxim prefers gonzo journalism. All his long-term projects ‘Uman, Rosh Hashana’ (2008-2012), ‘The Crimea Sich’ (2010-2013), ‘TB epidemic in Ukraine’ (2010-2012) it’s an analysis of the time, situation. He’s not interested in stereotypes, he is a direct participant in the events, and uses personal experiences and emotions in order to emphasize the basic meaning of the events.

His latest project ‘Culture of the Confrontation’, about revolution in Ukraine, opens second level, associational level in his photography. He had no goal to tell about time, place and what was happening. « I lost the line between reality and fiction. I wanted to evoke peoples’ associations. I wanted them to see what I saw. I saw not the Ukrainian revolution at the Independence Square, but battles from the legends or fairy tales». Maxim wants people to see through his photography something more important, to associate it with their memories from reading books, music, their own life.