<I>The Day</I>’s photography exhibit: “Thank you for saving us from emptiness”
“Thank you for the moments that we failed to see,” noted an anonymous visitor in the guest book at The Day’s photography exhibit. I would like to add: thank you for saving us from emptiness. This is the second time that the students, faculty, and guests of National University of Ostroh Academy had a marvelous opportunity to be not just observers but to some extent judges of The Day’s 8th photography exhibit or, as the newspaper’s editor-in-chief and jury head Larysa Ivshyna said, a feast of photographs.
“It is so unusual to see our own existence from the most varied angles,” says 4th- year Liberal Arts student Natalia Libchuk, sharing her impressions of the exhibit. “This is the way we laugh and cry; this is how we know how to be cruel or lonely.”
Ihor Pasichnyk, rector of Ostroh Academy, believes that The Day’s photography exhibits enable people to gradually change their way of thinking. We hear a lot of questions: what is to be done? How can we find the way out? How can we reach a common denominator? It is elementary: all one has to do is change one’s style of thinking. As The Day’s editor notes, “all these photographs are more than just pictures. Each time it is like a new brushstroke to Ukraine’s modern history and its new interpretation.”
“I wonder at how subtly the humorous can be combined with the serious: the line between these two ideas has been mystically erased. I think the picture ‘Who Told Her That?’ affected me the most. In my view, there is always someone in our society who is ready to jump to conclusions. On the whole, the theme of politics is quite interestingly reflected in the photographs. We are laughing at what is in fact our real life,” says 1st-year student Katia Salivonchyk.
Shattered stereotypes, erased borderlines, new points of departure found: these are the main emotional responses of visitors to the newspaper’s photo exhibit. The show gave viewers an opportunity to experience moments that we failed to notice, moments that make our life twice as long but which do not make us older — on the contrary, we become spiritually richer and more harmonious.
The exhibit of pictures by talented photographers are only one ceremonial part of the Jan. 22 Unity Day celebrations at Ostroh Academy, which welcomed 22 guests — Ostroh Club members — from Donetsk, Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, and Lutsk, and organized a scholarly conference devoted to Unity Day, as well as a Ukrainian-language discotheque, where the dress code was an embroidered shirt or blouse.
