Kirovohrad became nineteenth city visited by Den/The Day’s photo exhibition
In fact, the New Day: Lights and Shadow photo exhibition started functioning even before its official opening at the Kirovohrad Oblast Museum of the Arts. An hour before the festivities, the oblast branch of the Photo Artists Union held a seminar at the exhibition hall, attended by 25 of 27 organization’s members from the whole oblast. Later, in his speech at the opening ceremony, one of Kirovohrad oldest photo masters, head of the oblast Photo Artists Union Vasyl Kovpak said, “At our seminar we came to the unanimous conclusion that our city has never seen photo exhibition of such a high professional level. There is something to learn from here.”
The creative achievements by both professionals and amateurs taking part in Den’/The Day’s photo contest were also highly praised by head of the oblast branch of the National Artists’ Union of Ukraine Mykhailo Nadezhdyn. In general, representatives of almost all thirteen oblast branches of creative unions came to the opening ceremony. Television and radio companies sent their camera groups, the periodicals delegated their reporters and photo journalists. Editor-in-Chief of the Ukrayina Tsentr [Ukraine Center] national newspaper Yukhym Marmer said in his speech that Den’/The Day knows how to use both reporting and art photography in its pages. “And the exhibition is so multifaceted I will certainly find time to survey it without haste,” he added.
The Kirovohrad oblast state administration was represented at the ceremony by head of its culture department Yury Kompaniyets. Deputy head of the Ukrainian Press Group Valentyn Pustovoit handed him two copies of the book Ukraine Incognita for the oblast Chyzhevsky Library. Recall that this unique collection, first in the Den’/The Day’s Library series, includes materials on the blank pages of Ukraine’s history published by our newspaper in the last few years.
Then those present viewed the exhibition in an atmosphere of spontaneous communication. Volodymyr Bosko, a journalist with the popular Kirovohrad newspaper Narodne slovo [People’s Word], described his feelings thus, “Earlier all professional photo artists were conventionally divided into two categories: those ‘inventing’ their pictures and those fixating on what they see. However, today’s Ukrainian reality is so paradoxical and full of contrasts that there is no need to somehow organize your shoot. All you have to do is catch the variegated moments of life and register them on black-and-white or color film. However, the authors of the pictures shown at the exhibition are not just spectators with a camera. Their works generate associations and provoke the viewer to ponder them. Especially indicative in this sense is Kyivan Mykhailo Markiv’s Potatoes and Democracy. Members of the election committee came for a vote to an old disabled women sitting on her bed. But it is not an easy task to get to her: the floor is laid with potatoes, her only treasure helping her survive. However, there is no despair or hopelessness in the picture, as well as in other ones reflecting sad realities of our days.” This is hard to dispute: there are much more light than shadows in the works represented at the exhibition.
Recall that the exhibition was formed of the best works that took part in the New Day: Lights and Shadow Fourth International Photo Contest conducted by our newspaper in 2002. Earlier Den’/The Day’s photo exhibitions formed by best works of the last years’ photo contests have visited sixteen Ukraine’s oblast centers: Sumy, Zhytomyr, Rivne, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lutsk, Lviv, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Poltava, Chernihiv, Ternopil, Odesa, Uzhhorod, Chernivtsi, Khmelnytsky, Nezhyn and Truskavets.
