Current History in Photos
A dirigible flying a streamer reading The Day soared over the capital’s largest exhibition center, as limousines rode up, delivering the highest government officials and ranking foreign guests. The awards ceremony was about to begin.
Who knows, maybe this will be how the media will describe the opening of The Day’s tenth photo exhibit. The fifth one, held at Kyiv’s Artist’s Home last Friday, looked considerably more modest, in the sense that no dirigibles or other aircraft were flown over. The rest was fine, not only in the sense of the professional level of the works displayed (although many of the guests noted later that of over 120 items several dozen photos rated the highest awards), nor in the sense of the visitors’ social status (although among those present were people whose status was over and above the temporal limits, such as the poet Lina Kostenko and philosopher Serhiy Krymsky, Defense Minister Yevhen Marchuk, several people’s deputies, ranking businesspeople, television figures — e.g., Volodymyr Oseledchuk, Olha Herasymiuk, Dmitry Kiselev, et. al.). Most importantly, the evening had a very special atmosphere, so it passed not as yet another one marked by official pomp with that dry award-dispensing ritual and trite words of thanks, but as a genuine press holiday (The Day’s photo exhibit coincided with the newspaper’s seventh anniversary), noisy and dynamic. In some ways it reminded one of a New Year’s party. After all, the annual, now traditional, photo exhibit of this periodical has become a reference point of sorts. Stepping into the exhibition hall, the guests found themselves in a world of harmony, courtesy of the Revenko Music Quarter lending the soiree a special touch.
The project of young composer Oleksiy Revenko performed classical and the author’s pieces, including Andriy Bortniansky’s music for The Day. Most men wore classic costumes and women sported evening dresses. Some explored The Day’s latest publications, others concentrated on the book Dvi Rusi, dedicated to controversial pages in the annals of Ukrainian-Russian relations; still others leafed through the first edition of the series, Ukraine Incognita. Most others simply formed small groups moving along the rows of photos, lively discussing what they saw or silently examining the display with the air of true professionals.
Sometimes we criticize the lack of accord within the domestic journalist community, evidenced by the absence of an adequate response to the event on the part of colleagues, to the appearance of the first collective textbook on the history of Ukraine, Ukraine Incognita, as well as by the unwillingness to support the effort to revoke Walter Duranty’s Pulitzer Prize, for having told lies about the Holodomor...
As Larysa Ivshyna said in her introductory speech, “with our photo exhibits we offer an altogether different policy. We want this society (and the journalistic community in particular) to abide by the rule of may the best man win, given a transparent and perfectly fair competition. Because if we abide by this rule, it means that everybody wins, given the awareness of true justice as well as true aesthetic delight. We would thus add to our attainments. I believe that the seven years of our existence and work entitle us to some generalizing. This exhibit and awarding our winners are yet another opportunity to stress that we are all for this kind of logic; here not ‘our people’ but true winners are awarded. It is something important for this society, which is atomized,” stressed Larysa Ivshyna.
After that, prizes were presented to the winners of the contest. This year the number of awards is longer than in 2002. When sponsoring a unique contest creating a competitive environment for artistic photographers throughout Ukraine becomes an element of a company’s image, does this not serve as evidence that business in our country is becoming increasingly civilized? Incidentally, our photo contest’s prize pool (as well as the contest itself) has no analogies in Ukraine and surpasses the prize pools of national contests in Russia and the Czech Republic, for which we owe words of gratitude to our partners: the NRB Ukraine Bank, Ukrainian Professional Bank, Ukrahrolizyng National Company, 1+1 Television Company, Christopher Columbus Travel Agency, Kyivstar GSM, Truskavetskurort Ltd., National Artists’ Union of Ukraine, Kharkiv’s Zapovit Benevolent Foundation, and the Institute for the Problems of Contemporary Art.
After the ceremony, the guests could pay more attention to the works on display, to see for themselves that the awards had been justly presented. A guitar and a flute sounded as the audience was emptied of visitors, yet no one felt that the holiday was actually drawing to a close. The Day’s anniversary photo exhibit will be displayed at the Artist’s Home until October 5 and then would travel across Ukraine. There was also an album including the best photo contest works over the period of 1999-2003, as a visual aid addressing Ukraine’s current history, something no expert would call biased.
