Alexander Chekmenev - "Donbass": The real life of miners

Sometimes one photograph will say more than many sociological calculations or analytical articles. What if it's a photo album? The photo monograph of the famous Ukrainian photographer Alexander Chekmenev “Donbass” is a spiritual shock, a diagnosis and a sentence.

The book "Donbass" is, first of all, a story, a story that is true, at times cruel, and that is why it is surprisingly human. There are no subtle moves, artistic curtsy, beautiful frame, its author does not flirt with the viewer and does not give him hope. The artistic language of Alexander Chekmenev is open and precise, he absorbed the bitter essence of the miners' everyday life, the bleak stream of reflections on the essence of work and the meaning of life.

(Total 21 photos)

Alexander Chekmenev was born in 1969 in Lugansk, Ukraine. A childhood passion for photography inclines him to choose the profession of a photographer, which he receives in one of the photo studios in Lugansk in 1988. From 1990 to 1992 he studied at the correspondence department of photojournalism at Moscow State University. Member of the Union of Photographers of Russia and member of the Union of Photographers of Ukraine since 1993. Having received a job offer in 1997 in the weekly Vseukrainskie Vedomosti, he moved to Kyiv, where he lives to this day. Already in the early works of Alexander Chekmenev, the creative credo of the documentary photographer is indicated. Interest in people from vulnerable social strata unites all the documentary works of the author.

1. “I settled in the city of Torez. The old five-story panel apartment did not even have central heating. Many of the rooms had ordinary stoves made of sheet iron, which were heated by wood or coal mined in the mines.

2. The tin pipes of these stoves protruded from most of the soot-blackened windows of high-rise buildings. Cold water was given as if on schedule - about 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the evening, but there was no hot water at all.

3. I remember that I had to sleep dressed next to the stove - it was so cold in that apartment.

4. My money ran out quickly, so every morning, when I woke up, I walked several kilometers along the snow-covered steppe to an illegal mine, where I was known and recognized as one of my own.

5. There you could have breakfast and lunch, there was dinner and hot tea in abundance. I was no longer surprised at my position, the conditions in which I had to live for a long time in the mining region.

6. Everything suited me - I got used to everything. Only one thing never ceased to amaze me: I could not understand, to realize why those people who heat the whole state cannot heat their homes.

7. It was Sunday. In the house, which looked like a dilapidated barn from the outside, fun was in full swing - they celebrated the birthday of the mistress of this hut. Miner Lyubana is forty-nine years old.

8. Late at night the fun was in full swing, the people drank, danced, walked as best they could.

9. At some point in the middle of this holiday, a guy who was sleeping on a bed away from everyone silently got up, dressed in work clothes and headed for the exit. Having put on his boots at the threshold, he threw a sweatshirt over his shoulders, took a helmet, horse-racing and left the house.

10. I was struck by this scene, and I asked Lyuban, where did he go? “Yes, to your mine for coal, where else?” she answered. “So it’s night in the yard!” I wondered. The rather drunk, tired birthday girl looked at me with a smile and said quietly: “Under the ground it is always night. Any time of the day".

eleven.

12.

13. I remember my first descent into the mine. It was a “hole”, as it is customary to call “self-digging mines” in the Donbass, which was located on the outskirts of a mining village. Around the so-called "hole" in small heaps lay coal prepared for sale. People in black robes and mining helmets appeared from underground, poured freshly mined coal from the bags and disappeared underground again.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.