Chronicle

On March 21, 2017, there was a lecture by Kateryna Radchenko "The Photography of Change – Changes in Photography", taking place within the lectures and discussions program "Transformations in East Europe: 27 Years After."

The 1980s-1990s is the period of transformation on all levels of social, political, and cultural life. The fall of the "iron curtain" caused the "leakage" of information and access to new knowledge and practices. The processes did not go unnoticed for culture and art. Since the 1980s, the period of revolutionary change has started in photography. In Kharkiv, a trend of "social realism” emerges. It is characterized by creating blunt, critical images, depiction of reality without embellishment or effect of the governmental propaganda. The 1990s got access to new media (video art, performance, etc.), thus shaping new experimental trends. Painters started experimenting with video, photography, and collage; photographers played around with performance. The synthesis of new knowledge and conventional practices created a basis for new visual language in Ukraine.

The lecture considered main trends and movements in photography of the 1980s-1990s, as well as analyzed their impact on contemporary photography.

Kateryna Radchenko – is a curator, director of the festival Odessa//Batumi Photo Days, researcher of photography, a photographer. In 2009, she founded a "Mystetski Mandry" (the "Art Travel") NGO that held a number of international and Ukrainian national art projects. The curator projects took place in Poland, France, Germany, Estonia, Belarus, South Korea, and Thailand. She took art scholarships/residencies at the Museum of Photography (San Diego, USA), Gaude Polonia (Warsaw, Poland), Villa Arson (Nice, France); and studied curator practices in Sweden and Pinchuk Art Center (Kyiv). She is engaged into the development of new projects with Invisible Photography Asia and the Finnish Museum of Photography.

Photo by Andryi Horb