Photographic artists regard today’s Ukrainians as an inexhaustible creative source. On the one hand, globalization brings new trends to Ukraine; on the other, it so far peacefully coexists with the Ukrainian culture and mentality. The photo project in question attempts to create the effect of contrast and, at the same time, show typical features of the twentieth and twenty-first century generations in Ukraine.
At first it was planned to name the photo series Different People, for this reflects the author’s concept as best it can. The photography, documentary in style and method, was done in a studio. About forty works (with another 120-150 to follow) were presented in the same expressive manner. The concept set forth that different human types be photographed against the same background and in identical light arrangements. Mr. Haidai took as the object of his study our well-known compatriots — singers, actors, artists, writers, and ordinary people like factory workers, teachers, pensioners, etc. The main selection criterion was the typicality and photogenic properties of the individual to be filmed. For example, modest subway employee Mykola Kaliuzhny caught the photographer’s eye thanks to his heavy beard and a young mother with a toddler owing to her jubilant beauty. It is noteworthy that practically all project participants posed without makeup and in their everyday clothes, an actor being the only exception. Yet, makeup and stage costumes are as natural for them as nudity for a professional model or dinner jacket for a diplomat.
Each person needs ten to forty takes, while the preparatory period takes far more time. You must chat and sometimes have a cup of tea. First, this lets reticent people relax and thus makes it easier to photograph them. Secondly, the author himself is also interested in knowing his heroes better.
Although the project was financed by Mr. Haidai’s studios, the latter finds it difficult to carry out its next plan, publishing an approximately 150 page book. This is why Mr. Haidai and his team are now looking for people for whom the portraits book will be a matter of principle as it is for him. The studio is moving to the Carpathians. There Ihor hopes to achieve his long-held dream: to photograph the real Hutsuls (Ukrainian mountaineers — Ed.) immortalized by Kotsiubynsky and Paradzhanov. Then the team will go to the coal mining region, to remote villages, where you can still see “a dear little embroidered scarf,” to quote a song. It is then, after he has made this tour, that Haidai hopes to publish the book because now his collection mainly consists of Kyivans, which he admits is clearly not enough for him to fully carry out his plan.
Mr. Haidai thinks that the photographer is a secondary figure in this project. Hence the same background and lighting are aimed at contemplation, rather than affecting the process. In his work, the artist has tried to draw attention to the main thing: the individual, the personality. And, judging by their smiling faces, Ukrainians are entering the new century with optimism.
