Within the framework of Budapest Photo Festival 2025, from April 10 to 23, the Ukrainian Association of Professional Photographers (UAPP) presented in Budapest an exhibition by Ukrainian photographer Serhii Melnychenko — “A háború tetoválásai” / “Tattoos of War”.
This is a work about layers: about collective memory, reflection, emotions — and about what stays with us forever. Everyone has their own “tattoo”, but we speak about one thing: about pain. As the heroine of one of the shoots says, it is as if we choose “the photo and the memory that hurts the most”, although in reality there are thousands of such moments.
The method of the project is simple and at the same time vulnerably precise: a projector, a photograph, a camera. Images of places and events that people cannot “remove from their skin” are projected onto their bodies and faces — tragedies, destruction, shelters, bomb shelters, destroyed buildings. This is how a new layer emerges — a conditional “tattoo”, in which private memory becomes part of a shared experience.
One of the key images becomes a photograph from Mykolaiv — the author’s hometown: the building of the Mykolaiv Regional State Administration, destroyed by a Russian missile strike on March 29, 2022. Then 37 people were killed, and another 34 were injured; the central part of the building collapsed from the ninth to the first floor, and the clearing of the rubble lasted almost a week. This image “falls” onto the bodies of the author’s friends — Maryna and Serhii, who were also forced to leave the city. Their pain becomes visible not as an illustration, but as a sign that grows into a person.
The heroines and heroes of the project are friends, a beloved woman, children, civilians, — each with their own “photo-imprint”. A separate line is the children’s experience of war: even in relative safety the “tattoo” still remains, because the child knows what is happening and grows up inside this reality.
The author conceives this project as an opportunity for the Western viewer to understand more deeply the situation in which Ukraine lives — not through dry documentary, but through storytelling, the combination of narrative and the mix of conceptual and art photography. This is not an escape from reality, but another way of approaching it — through the physicality of memory and the shared nature of pain.
Serhii Melnychenko — photographer, teacher, founder of the school of conceptual and art photography MYPH. He began to engage in photography in 2009. During this time — participant of about 200 solo and group exhibitions, fairs and festivals around the world. Organizer and curator of more than 50 projects and exhibitions with works by students of the MYPH school around the world over the past 7 years. Winner of national and international competitions and awards including the Leica Oskar Barnack Award Newcomer in 2017 (Berlin), “Photographer of the Year” in 2012, 2013 and 2016 (Kyiv, Ukraine), “Golden Camera” in 2012 (Kyiv, Ukraine). Finalist of Krakow Photomonth, Pinchuk Art Center Prize, Off_Festival Bratislava 2014, DEBUTS 2018, Kolga Tbilisi Photo Award, Batumi Photodays and others.
Participant of Paris Photo, Volta Art Fair, Photo L.A., Photo Basel, Unseen fair. Nominee for the Foam Paul Huf Award in 2020 and 2023. Selected to participate in the European platform for photographers FUTURES in 2022. Serhii’s photographs are held in private and public collections in the USA, Hong Kong, Ukraine, Poland, France, Germany, Belgium, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Japan, the Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, Norway and others. In 2022 and 2023, two series, and in total 25 works by Serhii, were included in the permanent collection of the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung foundation. In 2023 he received an annual scholarship (grant) from the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung foundation to create his own photographic project.
