Culture of the confrontation

November 21, 2013 was the starting point of Euromaidan origin.

November 21, 2013 was the starting point of Euromaidan origin. By the evening, after the announcement of the President of Ukraine to suspend the signing of an association agreement between Ukraine and the Europe Union, about thousands of opponents of this decision came to Maidan Nezalezhnosti. It was a completely peaceful protest of the Ukrainian citizens in the support of EU, which apparently would have gone down for a couple of weeks. But a number of consecutive errors by the Government changed the course of the events. Bloody crackdown of the protesters, trying to clean Euromaidan, provocateurs actions led to the fact that millions of Ukrainians gathered in the main square of the country to defend their human rights and overthrow the existing power elite.

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. 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. 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.