Exhibits + Events Archive 2008 - 2009

This is a list of Michael's past Chernobyl photography events.

• Dec. 2-13, 2009: ХОТИМ, ЧТОБЫ ПОМНИЛИ (Wanting Remembrance), Gallery Creativity, Moscow. See details.
• Sept 3-Oct 30, 2009: After Chernobyl exhibit, Madison Municipal Bldg. Artspace, Madison, WI. See details.
• June 5-July 3, 2009: Inside Chernobyl exhibit, Slavutych Museum, Ukraine.
• June 5, 2009 at 7 p.m. Inside Chernobyl exhibit opening.
• April 24-May 8, 2009: Inside Chernobyl exhibit, Shevchenko Park, Kyiv, Ukraine.
• April 24, 2009 at 3 p.m. Inside Chernobyl exhibit opening.
• Dec. 21, 2008. Chernobyl Today: talk and slideshow, 1420 Hill St., Ann Arbor, MI.
  
• Dec. 11, 2008. Chernobyl Liquidators: slideshow, Centre Dovira, Ivankiv, Ukraine.
  
• October 30, 2008. Benefit event. Oakwood West, Madison, WI. See details.
  
• July-August, 2008. After Chernobyl exhibit. UW Health Sciences Learning Center, Madison, WI. See details.
  
• June-July, 2008. After Chernobyl exhibit. Bethel Fireside Gallery, Madison, WI. Reception June 22. See details.
• June 27, 2008. Chernobyl Town Meeting. See details.

all night long

Sex sells.

A prostitute in the red light district of Amsterdam negotiates with a group of three young men over the price of her services.

Amsterdam is a bizarre place. I was flying from Kiev to Detroit when they shut down the airport because of fog. I was stuck in the Netherlands overnight. So I took my camera and wandered around the red light district most of the night.

I especially liked the glow-in-the-dark underwear. But is very odd the way "normal" stores, (a bar, a shwarma stand, a tourist souvenir shop) stand cheek-to-bowel with the women of the night behind their big windows.

Got yelled at by a drug dealer for taking photos of him, and challenged by a pimp for taking photos of his girls. After that, I put my camera inside my coat, lens barely sticking out between two buttons, and shot this way.

Glad my body is not for sale. (And really, who would buy, anyway?)

Orphanage in Vovchkiv

Nina Rudenko, director of the orphanage in Vovchkiv village, near Chernobyl, oversees the distribution of clothes from a Spanish charity.

Perspective

Students at the Perspective English school in Slavutich gossip while they look up words in a dictionary.

Today I like this picture but yesterday I hated it.

Ukrainian church, Novo Ladizhichi

An elderly woman prays during a service at the small Ukrainian church in Novo Ladizhichi village. "New Ladizhichi" was built in 1987 to house evacuees from the original village of Ladizhichi following the 1986 Chernobyl accident. The church has been under construction for a full decade, as villagers have had trouble raising enough money to continue building. Because the church is unfinished, it is decorated with temporary posters rather than paintings.

Sometimes the best photos are hiding in the corners. I was photographing this service when I got intrigued by the shadows. I have started a series of Chernobyl photos in which people appear only indirectly. This fits.

man, those girls could dance!

Teenage girls from villages near Chernobyl come to the community center in Borodyanka for dance lessons.

I've been too busy shooting and too far from the internet to post much lately, but in the coming weeks I'll start sharing some recent work from my months living in Sukachi village, near Chernobyl.

Full caption: Dance and music teacher Lesya Kostenko (left) leads a dance rehearsal at the Chernobyl Community Center in Borodyanka, Ukraine. Her students, including Ira Dovstenka (in white), and Olya Shvitka (in black) are all 14-year-old girls from the village Nove Zalissya, 7 kilometers away. Borodyanka is a small town (population 16,000) where many Chernobyl evacuees were resettled in 1986, 30 miles west of Kyiv and 30 miles south of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

Sukachi liquor store

In a liquor and food store converted from an old trailer in Sukachi village, Ukraine, employees restock shelves in the evening, as seen through the trailer windows.

I've been on a shooting-through-windows kick recently. Partly I've been playing with layering, and partly it gets dark so damn early now (sunset about 3:45 pm) that much of my street photography has been in the night.

Or maybe it says something deep about my feelings of being an outsider, peering in from the outside.

Centre Dovira

If you read Ukrainian, you can read a nice little blurb about my After Chernobyl project on the homepage of the Centre Dovira in Ivankiv, Ukraine: http://ivankiv.cspr.info/

If you, like me, don't read Ukrainian, here it is in translation.

Hope

Hope, 2008.

I am feeling a lot of hope for the future this past week. Since I'm currently free from the constraints of shooting news stories, I've been pushing myself to make some more metaphorical images. Photos that capture an idea rather than a literal truth. So I went looking for some photos to express my newfound optimism.

I seldom bother to shoot from a moving vehicle. The rate of success is too low to make it feel worthwhile. On this morning, however, the fog was so dense and mysterious that I was coaxed into pulling out my camera. When we stopped beside a dirt road in the middle of nowhere I was ready.

What, you want a real caption? Okay, fine: A passenger disembarks from a bus on the road from Kyiv to Slavutich, Ukraine, as seen out the bus window on a foggy fall morning.

Slavutich

Slavutich is the new city built in Ukraine after the Chernobyl accident to house evacuees from the abandoned Exclusion Zone. Today nearly 4,000 of the 25,000 inhabitants still work at Chernobyl, commuting on 3 special electric trains that depart early each morning and get home after dark. In the evening, the workers walk home from the train station past the main supermarket in town.

benefit show tomorrow

For those of you in Wisconsin who missed my show last summer, you have another chance, tomorrow starting at 7 p.m. I'm supporting a benefit for FOCCUS (Friends of Chernobyl Centers, US), and my photos will be on display and on sale.


Thursday October 30, 2008
7:00 - 9:00 p.m.

Oakwood Village West, in the Village Inn
6205 Mineral Point Road - Madison, Wisconsin

There is a cover charge, but if you want to go as my guest, send me an email.

The evening will also include a short film about Chernobyl by Irene Zabytko and some Ukrainian musicians. More details about FOCCUS here.

earthquake in Kyrgyzstan

In light of yesterday's earthquake in Kyrgyzstan, I thought I'd post a photo from the region.

An earthquake in the Tien Shan mountains of southern Kyrgyzstan leveled the village of Nura and killed at least 70 residents on October 5, 2008. In this file photo from nearby, Kyrgyz horsemen herd cattle in a remote valley below 9,400-foot Kyzyl-Bel pass, along the road linking Naryn to the Chinese border at Torugart pass.

It's really a remarkably remote region. I'm not surprised they've had a hard time getting in and getting the injured out.

Ben and Abha's wedding

Their big fat Gujarati wedding.


I don't shoot a lot of weddings, but I always enjoy it when I do. Abha Thakkar and Ben Schumaker were married at Paradise Park, a lovely wooded site in Cottage Grove, Wis., with a massive crowd of friends and family in attendance.

1,000 travelers

Mike Osborn, traveling from Charleston, SC, to Denver, had just met Soni Haag, traveling from Orlando to Milwaukee, at a bar in the O'Hare airport.

I recently returned from a trip to NYC to meet with photo editors and book publishers. On my way home I started playing with a project I've often imagined but never had time to pursue.

I want to photograph 1,000 travelers. Eventually. Not sure where the project will end up, but it makes for an interesting self-assignment while I'm sitting in airports.

This need not be a solo project. If other photographers want to join me, let me know.

Name: Dan (surname withheld)
Origin: Budapest, Hungary
Destination: Denver, Colorado
Dan was calling his wife just after getting off his international flight.

Name: (names withheld)
Origin: Washington, DC (Dulles)
Destination: Kalamazoo, Michigan

Name: Stuffed Monkey and Ken Soliva
Origin: Zurich, Switzerland
Destination: Madison, Wisconsin

Name: Fred Deiter
Origin: Phoenix, Arizona
Destination: Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Name: Thomas Hall
Origin: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Destination: Billings, Montana

Name: Catalina (surname withheld)
Origin: Rome, Italy
Destination: San Antonio, Texas
Thomas and Catalina had not met until I took their picture.

Name: Machaela Brassell and Travis Whitlow
Origin: Brussels, Belgium
Destination: Nashville, Tennessee
Machaela and Travis were returning from a 3 week People to People exchange program.


Name: 1-year-old girl and her father (names withheld)
Origin: Richmond, Virginia
Destination: Austin, Texas

Name: Chris Ly and his son Full Ly, age 11
Origin: Saigon, Vietnam
Destination: Fort Wayne, Indiana
Chris and his two sons had been traveling for 22 hours and had missed their last connecting flight.

Name: Nicole Skovgard
Origin: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Destination: Columbus, Ohio

burying the lede

I've been accused of burying the big news in my last post. It is true. I failed to broadly announce my news. So here it is:

I am happy to have received a Fulbright fellowship. I will spend 10 months in Ukraine, photographing around Chernobyl and interviewing Chernobyl survivors. We will leave Madison in late August and I'll be in Kyiv starting mid-September.

You can read more about my After the Nukes project here and see photos from last year here.