Maxim Dondyuk’s photo from "The TB epidemic in Ukraine" series is awarded best of the year

February 22, a solemn awarding ceremony was hosted for winners of the nationwide competition "Photographer of the Year 2012", organized by the Foto.ua, the Internet resource for the art of photography, and with the “Foxtrot. Home Appliances” trading network as a general partner.

An independent international jury consisting of masters of photography: Vladimir Birgus, Anna Voitenko, Alexander Gliadelov, Rafal Milakh and Ksenia Nikolskaya selected the winners of the competition.

Best Photo of 2012 was awarded to a work out of Maxim Dondyuk’s series "The TB epidemic in Ukraine".

The winners in the nomination "Best Series of the Year" were 3 artists at the same time: Rusya Aseeva in the genre "Reportage", Arthur Bondar in the genres of "Portrait" and "Documentary Photography" and Sergey Melnichenko in the genre of "Art photo". The Audience Award won Natalia Sharomova with her series of photographs "New Life".

Arthur Bondar was awarded the Photographer of the Year for the series of works "Shadows of Wormwood".

Learn more about the winners here.

Photo of the year

Treatment room. Starozburivska colony No. 7, July 26, 2011.

Maxim Dondyuk comments his series:

"In 1995, the World Health Organization declared TB epidemic in Ukraine. Over the last 16 years the situation has only worsened. The disease takes lives of 30 people every day, and about 10,000 every year. In December 2010, I went to Donetsk region in Ukraine. What I saw there the very first day had strongly influenced me. One of the first patients I photographed was a man with the tuberculosis of intestine. He was lying naked in a hospital bed and staring at the ceiling. A week later, I was beside him in the last hours of his life. He could neither move nor talk, and his body was only skeleton and skin. He was holding a cross with his hands on the chest and prayed. After that, I became acquainted with his wife who told me about his moving through the house with his stomach torn dragging guts over the floor because the ambulance refused to transport her husband to the hospital. So, they were forced to call a cab and drive there by themselves. In a while I realized that this happens all over the country, and that TB epidemic is being categorized as the national problem. Many prisoners are released at the moment they develop a difficult TB condition, so as not to spoil the mortality statistics of prison sector. Two-thirds of ex-prisoners are dissolved in the civil sector not getting reported in the medical records. The hospitals are in a terrible condition and all TB care personnel comprise pensioners. Patients with drug-resistant TB have to use public transport to get medicines and food, and those who have no money just die in their bed. While Ukraine is immersed in a political war it remains indifferent to TB".

More about Maxim Dondyuk exhibition.