Photo voting

The Day’s photo contest that took place on Sept. 21-30 has traditionally become an outstanding event in the photo life of our country and Kyiv, in particular. This year it has made a record both in terms of the number of works and participants (over 200 and 200 respectively) and in terms of the number of exhibit’s guests. It was during the exhibit’s opening on Sept. 21 that the competent jury consisting of The Day’s partners has chosen their winners and awarded them with valuable prices. Not less important was the voice of the exhibit’s guests who had made their independent choice and chose their favorites. All the guests of the photo exhibit had ten days to express their opinion concerning the photo work they considered to be the best. They wrote the author’s name and the title of the work on special pieces of paper and put their “bulletin” down the voting box. While serious election passions with voting and counting of votes were taking place in the country on Oct. 30, The Day was counting the votes too, but there were other candidates and a different occasion, a more pleasant and positive one, in my opinion.

Thus, the objective audience jury defined Oleksandr Svystunov, winning 348 votes, as the only and indisputable winner. In particular, his work “A Shepherdess” has won 202 and “I Would Like To Have Those” (marked by a special prize of Yevhen Marchuk) -146 votes. Olena Shovkoplias with her work “Naturalness,” 251 votes, has won the second prize. Vlasyslav Musienko with his photo work “UZI” has won the third prize (122 votes).

The rest of the ten winners looks as follows: Stepan Rudyk -76 (works “On the Other Side of Intelligent” and “Bachus”), Ruslan Kaniuka — 81 (“Unexpected Gesture,” “Iron ‘Feliks’” and “Old Age in the City”), Oleksandr Kosariev-62 (“A Lion Cub from Lviv” and “In Commemoration of the Victims of the Holodomor”), Leonid Bakka — 41 (“Caries Comes to us at Night”), Mykola Lazarenko — 34 (“If We Had Studied in a Proper Way”), Vitalii Sokur — 29 (“After Having a Row”) and Maksym Levin — 18 votes (“Steps”).

The total of 1,231 people has taken part in The Day’s photo contest. Beside the people’s favorites mentioned above, the works by Pavlo Podufalov (“Improper Season”), Andrii Nesterenko (“Ukrainians, Read!”), Oleh Nych (“My Village,” “Returning Home”), Borys Korpusenko (“Dvi Pravdy,” “A Peculiar Flexibility”), Mykola Burkovsky (“It Was and Has Passed”), Anatolii Mizerny (“Ukrainian Idyll”), Victoria Koshmal (“The First Schoolteacher”), Andrii Pitaliov (“The Mayor’s Spiritual Tutor”), Yevhen Kravs (“Ostap Khmil”), Yevhen Kompanchienko (“An Old Man and the Sea”) and Andrii Tulchynsky (“A Diagnosis”) have found their fans too.

We may conclude that the elections have been a success, even without the international observers taking part. And those who have not won any material prizes, received an, arguably, more valuable prize: the recognition and sympathy of the photo art fans.