Your Beauty and Pain, Polissia, an exhibition of artistic and documentary photography by Kyiv-based photo master Leonid Milevsky, has opened at the Ivankiv district community center in Kyiv oblast.
The exhibition presents 73 works depicting the fabulous nature of this area affected by the Chornobyl tragedy. All the photos have been made in Kyiv oblast in the region of Polissia during past five years. Chornobyl zone photographs form a separate block. The captions under some works, those between quotation marks, use poetic lines from Lina Kostenko, Bohdan-Ihor Antonych, Yevhen Malaniuk, as well as folk song lyrics...
Leonid Milevsky chairs the Ukrainian Professional Bank’s board of governors. Photography has been his hobby for nearly forty years. A graduate of the Moscow Extension People’s University of Arts Department of Photography, he is member of the Union of Ukrainian Photo Artists, the participant in and prize winner at Ukrainian and international photo exhibitions and photo contests, and author of personal exhibitions, one of them now being shown at the Presidential Administration’s press center. (Milevsky is considered one of the best Ukrainian photo landscapists. His work, “Ukrainian Brand,” was part of the photo exhibition composed of the best works sent to last year’s fourth Den/The Day International Photo Contest — Ed.).
“My works very often focus on the Ukrainian countryside, unfortunately sometimes poor and wretched,” Mr. Milevsky says. “It is not a few acres of land that I got in the early eighties, which made me plunge into rural life. I had always been part of and known the problems of this life, for I was born and raised in the beautiful Polissia region, where I became conscious of our nature’s beauty and wealth. The rural theme in my work is perhaps the genetic call of my ancestors. The countryside is not only a bridge, for it allows direct contact between man and nature, and the latter is the most perfect creator, the source of human talents and spiritual wealth of the Ukrainian people.”
The exhibition, dedicated to the eightieth anniversary of Ivankiv district, was attended by not only Ivankiv residents but also guests from Kyiv and its vicinities, Russia, and Belarus, who wrote in the guest book words of gratitude to the author for the beauty he had captured.
