This is the title of the photo exhibition of social-psychological children’s portraits by Kherson artist Stas Volyazlovsky, which opened on June 9 at the O. Honchar Kherson Regional Scientific Library.
Stas Volyazlovsky, a supporter of the conceptual approach in art, known in the art circles of Ukraine and Russia as the author of the sensational scandalous exhibition “Chanson Art.” His psychedelic trash-epics on topical themes, whose heroes were Mikhail Krug, Pushkin, contemporary politicians, as well as Fauns, “Lolitas,” “Doctor Plague,” “Mutant Nurses,” “Dracula,” “frostbitten” children and other characters of media reality are captured on strange-looking fabrics resembling dirty rags from a flea market, and in this exhibition he avoids straightforwardness.
All the photos presented at the exhibition were mainly taken in large Ukrainian families. The author showed not just children, alone and in groups, on the street and indoors, with adults and by themselves, eating or playing, or simply looking into the lens, but he showed a problem – the problem of birthrate. After all, in recent decades Ukraine has been rapidly “aging” and losing hundreds of thousands of its population annually. The paradox of declining birthrate also lies in the fact that, while pointing to economic reasons for the reluctance to have children, some quite obvious facts are overlooked. Children’s voices are more often heard not in the courtyards of mansions whose owners do not experience financial difficulties, but in the “sleeping” working-class neighborhoods…
When the photographer catches a child’s gaze in the lens, one can read what chance this country has. Probably the same as these children have…Link
