Still life with watermelon Photograph - Limited Edition of 20

I am a Ukrainian photographer. I started working in photography in 2017. My practice consists of conventional and non-conventional approaches to documentary photography. My main motif is the complexity of the relationships between people. Other recurring themes are loss, memory, longing, and the experience of life struggles. My autobiographical stories are an important part of my work process. I rely on an anthropological notion of the lived experience of participants. I share some of my own stories in depth, as well as other people’s stories from their own lives. I place all these experiences in a broader context of the contemporary social issues that shape them. The past, as a memory and a shared set of stories, is understood through present-day voices, and in relation to present issues. I experiment with the potential of visual and verbal languages to represent these ideas. I combine different photographic processes with poetic texts. I aim to encourage empathy, and our relation to other people’s stories, to discuss and understand our current social contexts. My photography is influenced by the way I have come to respond to the memories of my experience of traumatic events in my early life. For a long time, these were difficult to process. Daydreaming and imagination became refuge, and myself grew more sensitive to the good moments in my life. I developed a sense of true joy from the contemplation of the beauty in things, and a strong attachment to those moments and the good people that became a part of myself. It is a dreamy vision of the world. And photography became the medium to express it. My work is inspired by the events, places, and people in my personal life. Some of the themes recurring in my work are memory, loss, family, longing, fantasy, and the healing power of nature. Driving my practice is an underlying need to share stories and emotions, to reach out and realise we are not alone.