<I>The Day</I>’s Photo Vernissage: At the Turn of the Millennium

Den’s 947th issue came off the presses on September 15, when a photo exhibit commemorating the newspaper’s fourth anniversary was opened at the City N Gallery. Before long we will see the 1000th issue of this publication, which we believe has become one of Ukraine’s most dialogue-oriented print outlets. And dialogue-oriented means not only dialogues with readers, but also discussions involving prominent people as regular columns dealing the most important problems facing this society.

The photo exhibit was the logical conclusion to the photo contest held by the Editors jointly with Kodak Ukraine during the year. Marking anniversaries, albeit only a few so far, and other editorial occasions is becoming a good tradition. Last year, marking its third birthday, the newspaper greeted the winners of the In Light of The Day photo contest. Incidentally, photos of that exposition were displayed in many Ukrainian cities, including Rivne, Lutsk, Nizhyn, Sumy, etc. The public response was massive and most gratifying, showing that our stand meets with quick understanding throughout Ukraine.

When asked why we chose a photo exhibit to mark our anniversary, Chief Editor Larysa Ivshyna replied that, of course, we could throw a banquet. But we are not a catering business, so we want to show our readers, friends, and colleagues precisely what we do. We consider photos one of the main components of our work. Also, we attach great importance to the discovery of new names. We made it clear at the outset that the photo contest was meant for both professional and amateur photographers — and an amateur won. Oleksandr Svystunov from Skybyntsi, a village in Vinnytsia oblast. Among those awarded was also Serhiy Tverdokhliebov, a high school student from Pryluky. We often hear that this country is losing talent. The Editors are trying to refute this, that talent is still here, and that it must be searched for and promoted — precisely what The Day is doing.

In Ms. Ivshyna’s words, the leitmotif of the current photo exhibit is bidding farewell to the twentieth century, an extremely trying period for Ukraine, rich in dramatic yet very significant developments. It was toward the end of that century that Ukraine finally gained independence. That was probably why all the photos submitted, so very different, had something in common, a fact noted by all attending the newspaper’s birthday, among them NSDC Secretary Yevhen Marchuk; Prominvest Bank Board Chairman Volodymyr Matviyenko (he had contributed the Grand Prix, a professional photo camera); the Canadian, Hungarian, and Czech ambassadors; officials from the German and French embassies; 1+1 General Manager and Producer Oleksandr Rodniansky; the channel’s leading journalists Olha Herasymyuk and Vyacheslav Pikhovshek; People’s Deputies Liliya Hryhorovych and Ihor Ostash; Ukrtelefilm’s manager and film director Oleh Biyma; composer Mykola Mozhovy; Oleksandr Bystrushkin, head of the Kyiv State Administration’s culture department; and the newspaper’s business partners (including the insurance company Utico represented by Vadym Zahrebny, chairman of the board, Ukrainian Transport Insurance Company), et al.

Actually, it was not a birthday celebration, for on such occasion the celebrity is given presents. Here everything happened the other way around as Larysa Ivshyna presented gifts (photo cameras and five CDs with the newspaper files). Although gifts is not the word, trophies is more like it, for each was hard-earned by the contestants. There were many winners, but here we will mention only the winner of the loving cup determined by counting the votes of those present at the opening ceremony: Volodymyr Bilous of Lubny, for his Portrait. New photo contests and meetings with our dear readers lie ahead.