“The provinces is a mental, not a territorial, notion.” These words of Pavlo KALENYCH, manager of the Olhopil agro firm, member of the Vinnytsia Oblast Council, a longtime friend of Den are often quoted on the pages of our newspaper. He said them as far back as 2007, when the Den’s Photo Exhibit first came to Chechelnyk, a district center in Vinnytsia oblast. This town will see the beginning of Den’s Days on August 18 for the sixth time. After a week in Chechelnyk, the best pictures of the Den’s 18th International Photo Competition will be shown in the village of Olhopil.
Incidentally, our photo exhibit will thus break a record – it will visit 11 cities in a year for the first time in the 18 years of its existence. A total of about 40,000 visitors have seen it over the past year in Kyiv, Sumy, Pryluky, Dnipro, Sloviansk, Mariupol, Lviv, Lutsk, and Izmail, with Chechelnyk and Olhopil now being the final destinations in this long journey.
“Such events as the Den’s Photo Exhibit increase the spiritual and cultural level of the rural population, which I aspire for as economic manager and oblast councilor. For the current policy towards the countryside is, in my view, not so clear,” says Kalenych who invited us to the Vinnytsia region. “Events like this raise the bar of the territorial community. This knits people closer together. People should be taught to like culture, for it remains unbalanced in society.”
It will be recalled that Kalenych has long been supporting the Den’s Photo Competition too. It is in fact the Olhopil agro firm that handed the Grand Prix to Oleksii Furman at the 18th International Photo Competition for the series “Overcoming.” “Somebody must support this kind of events. And who will do it but for me?” Kalenych muses. “If I didn’t respect the newspaper Den and this event, I wouldn’t be doing so. I support only what I like and what proceeds from the depths of heart.”
While there is a lull in the cities, and residents of megalopolises are seeking shelter from the sultry sun in holiday trips, it is, on the contrary, a hot period in the countryside. “The harvest is over, and life is slightly easier at the agro firm. But still we go on preparing the soil – we are caring about the next year’s crop. We are also preparing to harvest the late crops: corn, soy, sunflowers, and sugar beets. People begin to dig up potatoes. In the village, most people rest in the winter,” the Olhopil agro firm manager says.
