CULTURE of the CONFRONTATION

Winter 2013 changed Ukraine. 3 months of bloody clashes, tears, fear, Molotov cocktails, burning car tires and deaths. It already wasn’t just a protest in the support of EU. Ukrainian revolution brought new spirit, changed people and their minds, they became one organism that fight with a great passion and intensity for happy future. From the very beginning Euromaidan turned into a real performance, where started the battle of opposites. Good and evil, light and shadow, thick black smoke and whiteness of the February snow, orange helmets against black. On the revolutionary canvas creepy bloody scenes interwove with incredibly beautiful, from visually side, views. Euromaidan became one of the most beautiful revolutions, like scenes from Hollywood film. In my photos I tried to show the scale of all that happened in the centre of the country. Very often I lost the line between reality and fiction. I forgot the place, time and the cause of what was happening. In one moment the battle scenes reminded terrible days of the previous wars. In another - frosty, fiery battle turned Maidan Nezalezhnosty into a phantasmagoric place. Carefree, obstreperous Kyiv completely lost its familiar features. The title ‘Culture of the Confrontation’ shouldn’t be taken too literally, it’s not art culture that confront someone or something. Everything that happened in Ukraine, beginning with Euromaidan, it is confrontation of two different cultures. One culture that tries to save previous old times, they are nostalgic about former Soviet Union, and look into the past, they want to return the life they lived before. And we have another culture that think completely different, they look into the future and believe in a happy future of their own country. Under the word ‘culture’ I mean world view, style of life, people’s thoughts, religion. At Maidan it were not two different generations it were two cultural layers which live on one territory. This confrontation is eternal, it started ages ago and will continue again and again. It doesn’t depend what country. Text by Maxim Dondyuk & Irina Kolomyets.