Niels Ackermann went
to Ukraine for the first time in 2009 somewhat by accident. He yearned
to photograph in Russia, but it was too expensive for his budget as a
university student in his hometown, Geneva. Flights to Kiev were cheaper
than to Moscow, and no visa was needed.
He has returned to
Ukraine dozens of times, and last year he moved to Kiev full time. While
he did not make it to Russia in 2009, Russia, in a way, has come to
him. Its annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine have
changed Ukraine.
Mr. Ackermann covered
the early days of the Maidan revolution but has so far stayed away from
documenting the resulting war. Instead, he said, he has focused mostly
on personal stories in Ukraine so he can “go deeper and say something
different” than many other photographers there. His main project has
been photographing young people coming of age in Slavutich, a planned
community for workers at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, built after the
accident there in 1986.
The surprisingly
whimsical photo essay, three years in the making, has won Mr. Ackermann
the Rémi Ochlik award, named after the young French photojournalist who
was killed with the reporter Marie Colvin while covering the Syrian
uprising in Homs in 2012. Mr. Ackermann’s photos are on exhibit this
week at the Visa Pour l’Image photo festival in Perpignan, France, and
will receive the award there on Wednesday.
Winning the award for a story that was not war-related, given Mr. Ochlik’s work, was unexpected, Mr. Ackermann said.
“It’s a big surprise
for me because I always associate Visa Pour l’Image with war photos or
sad stories,” he said. “With this story I was trying to bring a more
positive perspective to a story that we usually think about in a
negative manner.”
Slavutich was built
from 1986 to 1988 by the Soviet Union in the immediate aftermath of the
Chernobyl disaster. Its residents include people who had to leave their
homes within a few miles of the site as well as others who moved to the
area in search of work at the damaged plant.
Data: 29.08.2016
Fonte: www.lens.blogs.nytimes.com
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