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A Sad End

From Spiegel Online:

The Sad End of the Orange Revolution

Ukraine will elect its new president on Jan. 17, for the first time since the Orange Revolution. […] The images [then] were reminiscent of Prague in 1968, Gdansk in 1980 and Leipzig in 1989. Russia, which had never overcome the loss of Ukraine, a country of 46 million people, was in shock. Europe, on the other hand, was filled with optimism.

Five years later, Ukraine is almost a forgotten country. The victors of that 2004 election, once feted on Independence Square, are now deeply divided, and the country’s political institutions are paralyzed. […] The country itself is broke, only managing to stay afloat with loans from the West.

And the color orange? It isn’t even being used in the current election campaign.

The full article is here, but that about sums it up. How disappointing, but maybe not surprising. The vibe back in 2004-5 when I was in Kiev for a week was so positive and hopeful (despite being out in the Ukrainian cold all night every night, sleeping during the day in the artist studio belonging to the father of a friend of a friend). Here’s a set of images looking back at when everything seemed possible.

At least my young daughter uses the little orange ‘Yushchenko, Tak!’ scarf I bought on the street there. A quaint antique now.

I’ll be part of an art exhibition/installation in NYC called Never Records, opening this Friday 1/15 in the former Tower Records space. The concept is art and photography presented in the form of mock album covers, music posters, etc (I did a 3x3 foot ‘album cover’ for my Eastern Europe project). Great to share space with work by, among others, X frontwoman Exene Cervenka and the late Dee Dee Ramone.

A Village Voice blurb is here, or visit the event website. Should be a cool show, thanks to organizer Ted Rierderer for bringing me into it.

Outernational recap

Had a great photo event (dubbed ‘Outernational’) last night with fellow members of Metro Collective. It was part of FotoweekDC, we took over the upstairs space at Local 16, a bar/restaurant on U Street.

I was frankly a bit surprised (pleasantly) by the turnout, we must have had nearly 100 people there, many standing throughout. The four DC-based members of Metro showed multimedia slideshows of our documentary work and had short discussion between segments, with our friend Andre Kravchenko from Mondano as host. Simple format of course, but it was amazing how good the vibe was and how engaged people were. We used the word Outernational (nicked with permission from our pals over at Thievery Corporation) to convey a sense of beyond borders, embracing what is out there beyond the line of sight.

The whole thing worked on many levels. I think it’s an encouraging model that deals with the question of how to bring photography to people in fresh ways. In this case, you had the cinematic experience of the photos combined with the living-room intimacy of the setting. Unfortunately, that’s a novel concept here in DC, though in many ways it’s the perfect city for such gatherings, there are a lot of internationally-minded people here who are also quite visually literate.

I felt like people were ‘surprised to be surprised’ by the photography; everyone is saturated with images these days, and maybe becoming a bit numb. But this showed if you present good work in the right way, still photography can really pack a resonant punch.

We hope to do more such events, including one we’re planning for next month geared for students, and an open-air rooftop thing next year when the weather permits. Hopefully we can work out a way for our international members to attend as well. Stay tuned!