All of Ukraine in the picture

Dnipropetrovsk – I would like to introduce a photo artist from Dnipropetrovsk, Pavlo Mamenko. Until recently, his pictures have mostly appeared on the pages of the local periodicals. I believe it’s time for the broader Ukrainian public to get acquainted with his art.

Cityscapes are perhaps the dominant genre in Mamenko’s work. His trademark pictures are taken at unconventional angles, presenting us with many unusual views of Dnipropetrovsk.

Mamenko’s work is acknowledged by other professionals. There is a website exhibiting works of Ukraine’s top 100 photographers, on which they evaluate each other’s pictures. Mamenko is rated as No.7 on this site. Anyone can judge this talented artist’s mastery via the Internet.

In 2009, Mamenko’s end-of-year personal exhibition at the Dmytro Yavornytsky Dnipropetrovsk Historical Museum was a hit. His pictures also decorate two photograph anthologies with the sights of Dnipropetrovsk, while his cyclorama of the city was published as a separate edition by Dniproknyha Publishers. More than 300 works by this author are presented at the city website gorod.dp.ua. Once, his refreshingly original panorama, Dnipropetrovsk Globe, was displayed on billboards, which the author found out quite by accident.

Mamenko’s track record includes numerous cityscapes of more than forty Ukrainian cities and towns, among them two more cycloramas, of Chernivtsi and Kolomyia. Mamenko enjoys driving around Ukraine in his own car together with his friends, discovering the beauty of his native land which he would not change for any foreign attractions.

I would also like to attract the public’s attention to his very special cycle, The Cave Cities of the Crimea. Mamenko is a co-author of the edition Ukraine’s Famous Cities, dedicated to the twentieth anniversary of the independence of Ukraine.

Mamenko is quite a collector as well. He has gathered a unique collection of pictures by Katerynoslav [the pre-Soviet name of Dnipropetrovsk – Ed.] photographers beginning with the very first of them, Vasyl Mitkin, who died before WWI.

He loves his city and does not conceal it. Nadia Kapustina, director of the Yavornytsky Historical Museum, noted as she spoke at the opening of his exhibition that in Mamenko’s photographs one can see the city of the future.

So today The Day’s readers, too, can appraise the work of my fellow countryman Mamenko. I am somehow certain that many fascinating artistic discoveries still await him.