<i>The Day’s</i> photo exhibit on the road
Vinnytsia is looking forward to the next one
Two weeks passed quickly and The Day’s photo exhibit left Vinnytsia to be shortly displayed elsewhere in Ukraine.
For two weeks Vinnytsia residents and guests were able to explore the exhibit and cast their ballots for the best ones. They also shared their ideas, impressions, and emotions in the guestbook.
Oksana Nesterovych, expert with the art gallery Inter’Chic which hosted The Day’s photo exhibit Den-2009, notes that each of the 14 days was dynamic and filled with interesting events. Hundreds of people explored the display every day, among them school teachers with their pupils and groups of college students. Among the most noticeable visitors was a group of Ecuadorians that made an entry in the guestbook in Arabic.
Among more than 50 entries is one left by Anna Korpacz who sketched her hand and wrote words of appreciation in Polish and Ukrainian.
There is an entry that reads in lades with an inscription below: “This greeting in the language of Maya.”
People in Vinnytsia proved to be the most active viewers of The Day’s photo exhibit, judging from their emotional entries in the guestbook. Almost every page boasts a pictorial message in the form of a flower or some abstract pattern. A group of students from Vinnytsia State Polytechnic University designed a symbolic figure for The Day by sketching their hands with the fingers of each superimposed on those of the next one, the result being a hand with many figures, with the word Den in the center. Every student signed it.
The shortest entry was left by a 19-year-old young man (he left only his first name, Serhii): “I want more of this! Thanks for brightening my leisure with bright colors.”
Oksana Nesterovych stresses that one could see bright colors in both the photos on display and on the visitors’ faces, but the brightest colors are found in the guestbook’s entries.
Below are some of them (some visitors left their entries unsigned).
“Your photos capture moments of bitter [disappointment], pain, joy, pensive mood, and the beauty of nature. It is hard to describe the emotions every photo excites. I would like to thank everyone who took part in it.
“Just to think what talented people live in Ukraine! I wish all who live in the city or the countryside could see this more often, for this opens your heart. Thanks a million! The best of success! May you live a hundred years!
“P. Polishchuk, Vinnytsia.”
“A photograph mirrors one’s soul and an epoch with its generations. There is no returning to a moment from your past, yet it is captured by a photo. We wish your photo every success.” (Unsigned)
“The photo portrait Umka is touching and very sage.” (Unsigned)
Myroslava Burleieva, history teacher at Vinnytsia School No. 24, who explored the photo exhibit with her pupils, sent the editors a collection of photos illustrating this visit. Each photo has a caption that eloquently explains what is in the photo and the emotions of everyone in it. Burleieva describes The Day’s photo exhibit as a sparkling mosaic pattern that reflects the life of our people, a graphic chronicle of Ukraine’s contemporary history: “I am wholeheartedly grateful to the organizers of this photo exhibit. Thank you all for the enjoyable experience you presented to the people of Vinnytsia; we are looking forward to the next exhibit,” the teacher wrote in conclusion of her letter.
Meanwhile, Photo Exhibit Den-2009 is on its long trip across Ukraine, so that “all who live in the city or the countryside could see this more often, for this opens your heart,” to quote from the guestbook. More on the photo exhibit in forthcoming issues.
The following are the results of the audience choice in Vinnytsia:
1. Oleksandr Prymak’s Oh Thoughts of Mine (33 votes).
2. Oksana Chebina’s Mood (26).
3. Yevhen Mashurov’s Wedding Party Celebrated by the Whole Village (24).
