Culture of Confrontation
A P R I L - J U N E 2019
Municipal Museum, Kirchheim unter Teck, DE
Curator: Wolfgang Dick
Introduction speech to exhibition
by Dr. Katrin Burtschell
Dear Maxim and Irina Dondyuk, dear Wolfgang Dick, dear guests, if we now immediately go over to the exhibition, after the opening ceremony and the interview with Maxim Dondyuk, then you'll be satisfied with what we've told here and what we've spoken, you will be informed – certainly also by your personal, political interest – and nevertheless I hope that you will be able to shake this all off and that you will be able to freely and unbiasedly approach these pictures, that don't really need explanations. Politics, history, revolution, democracy, these are the topics that are in the foreground. But the topic is also photography – photography in the field of tension between documentation and art.
Photos are perceived by us as parts of reality. They seem to be the irrefutable proof that a certain event actually happened in a certain way. The photo proves that something exists or existed. "Photos provide instant history, sociology of the moment, participation in the moment”, Susan Sontag writes in her important essay "About Photography".
But just because photography seems to be able to meet the demands of reality – of the things as they are – it is also abused, instrumentalized, or misinterpreted like no other medium.
Maxim Dondyuk is a photojournalist, documentarist and artist who knows about this problem. Yes, it is immanent in his work – even in earlier projects, which always concerned social phenomena and dangerous border areas related to the culture of his homeland.
When a photographer moves between the fronts of a conflict, there always arises the question of objectivity. Photos can become the symbol for a truth, which one of the two conflict parties is longing for. A picture can be the truth, or the opposite of it. It can become a part of a personal truth. Perhaps the only truth is that there is no universal truth. If too many conflict partners are involved, everyone has his own view of things, his own feeling.
Between dozens of opinions, an own opinion establishes. But also the photographer's view on the event is always an interpretation.
What do Maxim Dondyuk's photographs represent?
First and foremost, they are the documentation of a historical event. Most of you already know these pictures from the press. Are they political? critical? party-grasping? Part of the revolution? Is his point of view objective? All these questions and aspects have already been thematized related to Maxim Dondyuk’s even controversial works. These images are the view of and interpretation of an event through the lens of the camera, through the eye of the photo artist Maxim Dondyuk. They are his own view.
A pro like Maxim Dondyuk has a sharp eye, even in dangerous situations in which he has often to act at lightning speed. The focus must always be on the essentials, on what will happen immediately in the next few seconds. Then professionalism combines with intuition.
Maxim Dondyuk's art results in capturing the mood and atmosphere of the things that happened, but also in expressing his own feelings by means of visual aesthetics and technical resources such as exposure and focal length. This is the origin of his artistic form.
The choice of lighting moods is part of the photographer's tools, and the result is drama, or sobriety, depending on what the intention is. The photographer uses his know-how, his technical means, to catch the drama of the moment with light and shade, almost as picturesque as in Caravaggio's paintings. Maxim Dondyuk experienced the powerful emotions that took place on the Maidan immediately and captured it authentically. He photographs only with one 35mm lens, what means he's got to get close to the action, down to half a meter distance. This is very close, close enough to feel the same emotions: fear, happiness, grief – just as his counterpart. No matter on which side of the conflict this counterpart stands. So the pictures of the Maidan Revolution are not only the documentation of a historical political event, but above all the documentation of a mood, an atmosphere, and an emotion, they are highly aesthetic compositions of movement and stagnation, light and shadow, situation and overview, closeness and distance. The revolution, Maxim Dondyuk writes, felt like a performance from the very beginning in which cruel-bloody scenes are interwoven with others of incredible beauty.
Aesthetics is indeed an important keyword here and many people will be shaking heads confronted with the topic – violent protests with victims, confrontation, riots – and will deny a connection between these events and aesthetics. But let's look at the term aesthetics in its original meaning coming from the Greek: Aisthesis – perception. Aesthetics therefore, before it is a teaching of art and beauty it is a teaching of how to look at things. These are the images of Maxim Dondyuk for me in the first place – perception. Perception of the individual as a whole, perception of the whole consisting of the individual, perception of details, perception of the "image", of the "composition" in the moment of photography, perception of the situation, perception of emotions around him, perception of himself: There is no longer any distance between the photographer and the event.
In the foreword to the book "Culture of Confrontation", which will be published in the near future, writes Jean Francois Leroy: "A conflict photographer doesn't snap pictures, he's there in the coal mines, with those he photographs.” Maxim Dondyuk fought through his camera in this revolution – for 3 months! The result is a visual diary that begins on December 1, 2013. Already for weeks thousands of Ukrainians have been protesting in autumn 2013 at the Independence Square Maidan in Kyiv for the signing of an Association Agreement with the European Union. Until the President, Viktor Yanukovych canceled the ratification under pressure from Russia and against his previously promise. On the night of November 28, 2013 demonstrators – mostly students and artists – saw their hope, a closer connection to Europe, was destroyed. At first there was a peaceful festival atmosphere, until the news came around that the square was surrounded by police task force. On the night of November 30, they storm Maidan Square. From now on, the atmosphere changed, the crowd on the Maidan began to change – people of all classes, all professions, from all cities of Ukraine came to the square. Sleeping, singing next to the Ukrainian and European flags – the national anthem was played every hour the revolution had begun – a revolution of dignity, a revolution of the civil society popular uprising – Euro-Maidan.
Maxim Dondyuk came to Maidan square for the first mass meeting on December 1 between all those who not only protested for European integration, but above all against those who had attacked the students at Maidan Square two days earlier. He immersed himself in this historic conflict that day. From the beginning the artist experienced Maidan as a performance, as a universal struggle of opposites. Like most of the demonstrators, Maxim Dondyuk initially assumed that the Police would evacuate the Maidan Square in a short time. He didn't have a clue, that he would spend the next three months there.
Phases with a peaceful atmosphere alternated with aggravating situations. In the night from 10 to 11 December there were violent conflicts – Maxim Dondyuk photographed from a terrace higher up, a sea of orange helmets (demonstrators) and black helmets (state power), clashed against each other. The whole scenario seemed surreal. And it is reminiscent to the famous Renaissance painting by Abrecht Altdorfer, the Alexanderschacht from the year 1529. Here, too, the enemy troops are colliding. The whole scene also acts like a moving sea, an organism of movement and counter-movement. This picture with the helmets is one of those pictures by Maxim Dondyuk, which shows a general symbolic character, it is valid for every conflict, every confrontation, no matter whether now or then or in the future. Maxim Dondyuk reports in retrospect, that on the Maidan some moments and feelings had an almost abstract and universal character. The street battles seemed unreal, as if they could also be found in some medieval fairy tale or in a legend. Thus visualized, his images distanced themselves from the local context, Ukraine, his hometown. He tried to show a more abstract, universal conflict between brightness and darkness, between light and shadow, between the dense black smoke and the white February snow and in a certain way between good and evil, although it was sometimes impossible to say which side was which. What happened on the Maidan became a symbol of colliding opposites. The photographer does not only document the conflicts and struggles, he also captures in his images the whole story. Maidan – a place of humanity. People live and fight here. People, who fall in love, get married and die... little episodes, snapshots, as well as the bloody clashes. Beautiful moments of togetherness and hope. The people support and help each other. Musicians come to the square and play for the demonstrators. This is the moment when the impressive photo of the cellist was made with the face made up in white in front of the barricades.
In the night from 19 to 20 January, there are again massive clashes. The government issues a ban on the freedom of speech and the right of assembly. Police use water cannons against the demonstrators at icy minus temperatures. The water freezes immediately and the demonstrators' clothes freeze to their bodies. The result are images of surreal effect that almost seem apocalyptic. Thick black smoke, fire, ice and snow, injured, exhausted people. But we also see people carried away by their conviction, their passion, their will to fight, and also here again comparisons force themselves on to the large historical paintings of art history. The "Victory of Freedom" by Delacroix for example appears to our imagination. This image has long been a part of our collective cultural memory. We find similar poses and scenarios in Dondyuk's pictures, as if it were a form vocabulary of revolution, the euphoria that increases pyramidal to the top, the hoisting of flags, the ardent singing of the hymn, the sacrifices, the victims lying on the ground. They are the cruel tribute that the revolution takes, without them there will be no change taking place. At the end of January the inner city of Kiev resembles a war zone, a combat area. Right in the centre of a European city, unarmed People shot dead. The predominantly peaceful revolt became a catastrophe.
February 20: There are bitter street fights between the demonstrators and the Berkut militias, people are dying on both sides.
February 21: Yanukovych flees, the regime collapses.
February 22: Kyiv mourns his dead.
Images are created that we can hardly bear in their proximity, authenticity and drama. And here too it appears again, the comparison to what has already been long ago: Goya's horror of the Spanish civil war – the shooting of the insurgents. These images are timeless, their commonality with the photographs of Maxim Dondyuk results from the fact that they show both equally, the euphoria of fighting together for one common goal and the horror on the other hand, they show us that the price for it is to high, paid with human lives – 122 people have lost their lives in the Maidan revolution. 122 individual fates, 122 silent voices.
Photography is a voice that remains, that rises and has its own story, a personal story told. At the end is Maxim Dondyuk's visual diary. Photography allows him to discover and understand the world. For him, it is a form of philosophy, even religion. The camera is a weapon in the fight for humanity.