MAXIM DONDYUK

CULTURE OF CONFRONTATION

Everything that happened in Ukraine, beginning with Maidan, is a confrontation of two different cultures. One culture tried to cling to old times, old ways of living. They were nostalgic for a past that meant a lot to them, to their parents and grandparents. Yet there was another culture that felt completely different. They looked ahead to forging something new, a different country. By the word culture, I mean worldview, a term that encompasses a state of mind. On the Maidan, there wasn’t merely a clash of two different generations. There were two layers of culture colliding on the territory of a single country. This confrontation is eternal. It transcends Ukraine, and it transcends that city square where the revolution took place in the winter of 2013-2014.

Winter 2014 changed Ukraine. Three months of bloody clashes, tears, fear, Molotov cocktails, burning car tires, and deaths. The Ukrainian revolution brought a new spirit, and changed people and their minds, people became one organism that fought with great passion and intensity for its human rights. Project Culture of Confrontation was a turning point in my life. Maidan changed me and my perception of photography. On the Maidan, at some point, the emotions for me took on an almost abstract, or universal character. The battles on the streets appeared almost unreal, as though occurring in some medieval fable or legend. Visually my photos broke away from the specific context that this was all happening in Ukraine, in my hometown. What I tried to capture was the more abstract, universal conflict that was playing out, between light and shadow, between the thick black smoke and whiteness of the February snow, and in some sense between good and evil, though it was often impossible to tell which side was which.

From the beginning, the revolution felt like a performance, with scenes of carnage interweaving with incredible beauty. In that sense, I think I did manage to remain objective, to remain impartial, while still feeling and expressing all the powerful emotions that were playing out. Through my photos, I showed the scale of all that was happening, and in the process the line between reality and fiction sometimes became blurred. I would forget the place, time, and the cause of what was happening, and felt transported to some phantasmagoric place that resembled the awful battles of past wars. In that sense, what happened on the Maidan became a symbol to me of opposites colliding.