April 27 at 17:00 / GALERIA ECHO, 20 Swietokrzyska Street, Kielce
Exhibition presented as part of the FOTOPERYFERIE Festival, organized in cooperation with the Department of Entrepreneurship and Social Communication of the Kielce City Hall and the Kielce Landscape School Foundation.
Photo exhibition from the series: "Stop the war." includes 40 works made between June and October in various Ukrainian cities. The main goal was to draw the world's attention to the differences in the conditions in which Russian athletes practice and in which Ukrainian athletes try to practice - in sports facilities ruined by Russian aggression. This is a convincing voice for the exclusion of Russian and Belarusian athletes from participation in any international sports events. For, despite all the efforts of Ukrainian federations and appeals from the Olympic Committee, Russians are still free to play tennis and participate, for example, in commercial bodybuilding tournaments.
Since the beginning of my passion for photojournalism, I have closely followed coverage of major global events and photojournalism from places where warfare was taking place - Afghanistan, Syria, Karabakh. So when the February 24 explosions hit my country, I already had a preliminary idea of what to do, what material would be relevant, and what simply didn't make sense to photograph. Unfortunately, strict filming restrictions prevented me from pursuing the idea early on, but by summer the restrictions and panic had eased, and I decided to make myself such an unusual birthday present. To create an extraordinary series of photos about the strength of spirit and struggle of Ukrainian athletes against the background of destroyed buildings and stadiums.
In the news channels of the leading news agencies from Ukraine, all the war images look the same - troops, equipment, emotions of grief and pain. Unfortunately, these images quickly became indifferent to viewers - and in order to regain their interest at least for a while, the problem of war had to be shown in a different way.
Military sports photography is very rare, after a long Google search you can see only a few images in this style. And a series of works united by a single idea has most likely never been seen before in the history of military journalism. I think this is the uniqueness of my photos, confirmed by hundreds of thousands of reposts and likes on social media, even from people who have nothing to do with sports.
However, I would not recommend anyone to do it again - many sites are not yet fully demined and it is difficult to walk on the damaged floors. In Kharkov, in Saltovka, as well as in Kiev, near Obolon, Russians came very close to me during my photography. This is a very dangerous job for an unprepared person.
As part of the Festival PHOTOPERYFERIES - Co-organizer: Kielce Landscape School Foundation /. Festival curator: Stanisława Zacharko-Łagowska
Mykola Synelnikov is a sports journalist and photojournalist, born and living in Kamenets, Ukraine. He is a member of the National Union of Journalists and a member of the Union of Sports Photographers of Ukraine. He has been writing and photographing for sports pages since 2008. Since 2012, he has been running the sports page for a local newspaper. He has many publications in national sports publications: "Futbol," "Ukrainian Futbol.„, "Arena" etc. Since 2016, he has been an official photographer at many international competitions held in Ukraine. Since 2022, he has been working with the international agency REUTERS, covering the war in Ukraine. Synelnykov is a winner of Nikon photo contests, and a series of basketball photos dedicated to the beginning of the 2019 coronavirus outbreak was exhibited in Nyon (Switzerland) at FIBA's headquarters, the Patrick Baumann House of Basketball, as one of the best works of the year.