Alexander Chekmenev: The Donbas
© Alexander Chekmenev
About Alexander Chekmenev
Alexander Chekmenev was born in Luhansk (1969) and started his career as a photographer in a local studio there. He moved to Kiev in 1997, but, as it happens to photographers, his native Donbas (a region in Eastern Ukraine) remains his primary source of inspiration. His photos documented the post-Soviet history of the region from the early 1990s, when a newly independent Ukraine wanted all its citizens to obtain a Ukrainian passport, to the beginning of the war conflict with Russia in 2014. They showed the incapacitated elderly, the unemployed young, the amateur miners and the drunks of both sexes. The images uncover the degraded living conditions of the people and the degradation of their vodka-soaked minds.
Alexander Chekmenev has received numerous awards, including Ukrainian Photographer of the Year 2013, published two books – Donbas and Passport. His works were showcased at personal and group exhibitions in Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Germany, South Korea and the USA; published in New York Times Lens Blog, TIME Lightbox, The New Yorker Photo Booth, MSNBC, Quartz.