Winner of the 2014 Ville de Perpignan Rémi Ochlik Visa d'or Award

November 21, 2013 was the starting point of Euromaidan. By the evening, after the President of Ukraine had announced that the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union would not be signed, thousands of citizens opposed to the decision came to Maidan Nezalezhnosti.

It was a completely peaceful protest by EU supporters. It would have subsided within a week or two, but a number of errors one after the other by the government changed the course of events.

A violent crackdown on protesters in a bid to stop Euromaidan, plus provocation, brought massive crowds out, assembling on the main square of the capital, demanding respect for human rights, and calling for an end to the regime and the country’s political elite.

dondyuk_ukraine_038.jpg
dondyuk_ukraine_005.jpg
dondyuk_ukraine_056.jpg
dondyuk_ukraine_068.jpg
dondyuk_ukraine_076.jpg
dondyuk_ukraine_091.jpg

Euromaidan became a dramatic spectacle, a battle of opposites: good versus evil, light versus dark, thick black smoke versus bright white February snow. On the revolutionary canvas, sinister and bloody events were interwoven with striking, visually aesthetic scenes. Euromaidan became a most beautiful revolution, straight from Hollywood!

In my photos I tried to show the scale of everything that happened. Often I lost the ability to distinguish reality from fiction. Some battle scenes were reminiscent of the worst days of war, with frost and flames turning Maidan Nezalezhnosti – Independence Square – into a phantasmagoria, destroying the familiar features of the once carefree and turbulent city of Kiev.

*Maxim Dondyuk & Irina Kolomyets *

Maxim Dondyuk

portrait_dondyuk.jpg
Follow on
See full archive