Maxim Dondyuk

Maxim Dondyuk (b. 1983) is a Ukrainian visual artist working in the field of documentary photography. His practice integrates multiple mediums including photography, video, sound, text, and archival material. Maxim’s works often explore issues relating to history, memory, conflict and their consequences.

 

In his ongoing project “untitled Project from Chernobyl” Maxim works with vernacular photography, exploring the life of the so-called exclusion zone before the accident of 1986. The author speaks about memory, territory, atomic energy, and nature. Started as contemplation of emptiness and silence of abandoned territory, it turned into an exploration of the past. Old films, family and travel photos, amateur portraits, postcards, letters – all these years the memories had been exposed to nature and radiation. “Sometimes, when I was in the Chernobyl all alone, I had the feeling that I was in the future, and only from these little bits of history do I know that terrible truth that destroyed an entire civilization”, says Maxim.

 

Maxim has been widely awarded numerous recognitions including Lucie Awards, Prix Pictet Photography Prize, W.Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic photography. His works have been exhibited internationally, at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris, Somerset house in London, MAXXI National Museum of XXI century Arts in Rome, the Biennal of Photography in Bogota, Colombia, among others.