Your name
Vitaly Fomenko
Place of birth
Sevastopol, Crimea, Ukraine
Place where you live now
Ukraine
3 words to describe you
Contemplative, wanderer, creative
Why do you take pictures?
This is a reflection of my soul
Where do you get your inspiration?
In the wild, from books, communication with loved ones, the Bible.
Who are your influences?
Alexander Lyapin, Kharkov school of photography, Jesus, Van Gogh, книги, Leonid Matveev, women
What determines the subject matter you choose?
Everything spontaneously comes in contemplation and reflection during daily walks, the political situation.
What impact would you like your art to have?
To penetrate the mind, heart and soul and spark thoughts and reflections about the eternal, about the mortal in the viewer.
What artwork do you never get bored with?
My own
Is there anything you want to add?
No

The Honor Roll
Project statement

Vitaly Fomenko lives in Sevastopol, which provides him a unique opportunity to witness the life in Crimea after the annexation. Fomenko’s The Honor Roll is in fact a series of reproductions of found material: it shows half-ruined discarded photographs that had belonged to a Ukrainian military cantonment and were ditched after the place was ceded to Russian troops without a fight. The portraits in this work appear like zombie phantoms, a spiritual visitation of the seemingly bloodless war.

“Winter of 2015, Sevastopol. A rubbish dump. As I was passing by, my eyes stumbled upon the artifacts of an Ukrainian military facility: honor roll photos of Ukrainian soldiers, their personal files, psychological tests - ruthless documents of Crimea’s most recent history. I began to dig specifically, with a rake, clearing the piles of debris, like an archaologist, carefully and gently.”

vitaly fomenko
@vitaly.fomenko