Over 30 original black-and-white photos of three-meter length are on display in the main hall of the National Culture-Artistic and Museum Complex “Mystetsky Arsenal.” The author of the photos noted that this is the first large-scale exhibition since the project RAZOM.UA was launched. And it is quite symbolical that it takes place namely in Ukraine, the project’s main heroine.
RAZOM.UA was launched eight years ago as a project of visual capturing of moments when collective energy is revealed, which “consists of bright personality energies, which in cooperation create a collective portrait of today’s historical moment of Ukraine and its time.”
All of the 30 large (950 2,900 cm) panoramic photo portraits of the project
RAZOM.UA show large groups of Ukrainians (100, 200, or 1,000 people), united by a common cause or idea. So, among the photos you can find a photo of a military crew, Ukrai-nian HQ personnel, fosterlings of an orphanage with their tutors, a fire squad, residents of a Carpathian village, and a team of bikers. The photo’s background supplements the idea of the energy’s synergy, because in the photo people are placed freely in the surrounding natural for them: plant workers – near their shops, builders – in the windows of a big house, priests – near a church, pilgrims – at the place of their pilgrimage.
A PHOTO PORTRAIT OF COLLECTIVE IDENTITY
In a short interview with The Day Ihor Haidai explained what inspired him to implement the project and why the goal of RAZOM.UA is to study the phenomenon of collective energy, which looks quite an ambiguous notion, especially in retrospective.
Last century added a bad nuance to the notion of collective energy.
“I would even say, a dangerous nuance, because such phenomena of the last century, as Fascism and Stalinism, showed how dangerous the phenomenon of collective energy can be, when it is being masterminded by an evil genius.”
Why did you as an artist started to study this phenomenon with the help of photography?
“Because people are social creatures. I personally dream that people learn to use the phenomenon of collective energy to multiply positive things. Incidentally, historians confirm that groups of people become more moral, in spite of all perversions and distortions. Whereas a mere 100 years ago resolving questions only through violence was considered a norm, today it is not so.”
What is your vision of the problem of understanding the phenomenon of collective energy in Ukrainian society? For we often hear blames that within the 70 years of collective model of social organization Ukrainians have lost individualism and forgot what individual responsibility and individual success is. At the same time another problem remains urging in our country: inability to unite.
“The problem is about social connections, which affects individualism in the society and people’s ability to create groups. I have asserted this by my project RAZOM.UA. We have bad contacts with each other because having lots of problems we are also unable to accept our fellow as a partner, rather than a competitor. A famous person said that today humanity is living according to the principle of individuals’ competition, but it should move to the stage of personalities’ cooperation. I personally do believe that people are gradually moving to this. And we should watch and capture this process.”
Critics call you an “architect of collective identity of the Ukrainian nation.” An architect is the one building and creating. So, what collective portrait of Ukrainians would you like to create?
“I don’t want to create anything. I want to recreate. I am an observer. No doubt, I do intrude in some indirect way, even by coming to a group of people with an offer to make a group photo. But this factor can hardly create the collective identity of the nation you’ve mentioned.”
IMPRESSIONS
Mykola SKYBA, deputy director general of the National Museum of Arts of Ukraine:
“Ihor Haidai’s project, RAZOM.UA, embraces eight years of the master’s work, tens thousands of people, captured in 50 photos, most of which are over three meters long. But the simplicity of execution, black-and-white staged photo without any special lighting effects or play of shadows, with a banal composition decision, produces no less emotional effect. At the same time, every photo is perceived like an oratorio or fugue. The concept of the project has been defined quite precisely: it studies the phenomenon of collective energy. And we see not a spontaneous power of a mob, but an organized strength of various groups of people. The energy reveals itself not in the movement, but in invisible power lines forcing people to stay together. In some cases, like in a group portrait of bikers, the people are guided by a common interest, others are united by a production process or army discipline (here we have space for observation from the point of social anthropology, psychology, and other angles), but you can always read in the composition the stream of energy present in the concentration process, a rising wave. This state may be caused by the process of preparation for a grandiose group photo session, or by experiencing a unique event in such corporations as Tytan Plant in Armiansk, because nobody has ever gathered together two shifts of the company with a continuous production cycle at the same time. Here it is important indeed, what remains non-captured. You can see something in the monitors which supplement the exhibit, enabling the visitors to become witness of a documented process of preparation and execution of each photo mosaic. Namely this aspect behind scenes conceals the greatest importance of the whole project.
In terms of culturology, Haidai’s pictures make us recall the group, thoroughly planned photos of the early 20th century, when photography was considered something like a ‘God’s eye,’ a kind of analogy to Egypt relief sculptures and painting, or ‘choral’ Orthodox icons, which via the sacrament of spiritual union conveyed the feeling to belonging to the immortal.
“Today, in the epoch of numerous devices and gadgets (which look an incredible innovation in the morning, and become an anachronism till the evening), emancipation from the implacable biological time is resolved through transcending life into the net, by creating various avatars. But frequently this state is very ephemeral and short-lasting, and namely photography fulfills the function of magic realism, and conveys the authenticity of a life splash.
“There is a moment of routine life sacralization, when hundreds, or even thousands of people for a moment break away from routine work and form in front of an objective, looking along the trajectory given by the artist, which equals eternity, in a sense. We often lack this in our everyday lives with its unstopping process of producing and consuming. Moreover, Haidai shows in a most obvious way the necessity of this moment, which makes us get abstract from what we are doing at this particular moment in this particular place, and see it in a reversed perspective. Most important, this moment levels the meaning of social statuses, occupations, and the universal power line ‘me – us,’ which all of us have to resolve, no matter what the concrete situation is, goes up to the surface. Interestingly, this universal is revealed in a most apparent way namely through corporative solidarity within the limits of a concretely taken group or community, even such a situational one like a children’s football team. And speaking about the nation’s metaportrait in generalized notions, you cannot imagine it beyond this polyphony of identities of local groups.”
