A photographer muses on the state of modern Ukraine in works that elegantly blend art, fashion and politics
“Although I do shoot fashion and I feel really lucky to be in a position where I am making those images, my real passion and all of my personal work is about real people. I find it interesting to get inside people’s worlds, especially the youth, to shoot young kids and their dreams. My work is about showing the similarities between young people all over the world. There are some political aspects to it, of course, but really it is about the shared beauty of everyone.
I went over to the Ukraine, to Kiev, just before it really started changing politically in 2013. There were things going on, the uprising had started, but it wasn’t being covered fully in the media. I follow the news, not just the news you are fed through TV and newspapers. I could see that the country was at a tipping point. I knew something was coming and I wanted to document this quiet time in their history, before it really kicked off.
The kids that I was photographing, their parents are from the USSR and were part of the regime, but they are the future. There was change coming and they knew that. They wanted to be a part of it, but they were on their own. They can’t ask for help from their parents because their parents are part of the regime. The book is not focused on the Rise-up, Ukraine! demonstrations or the war; it is about this quiet, transitional period, in-between the Soviet-era and the dawn of a new world of Eastern Europe, a time in history that can’t be recreated. I wanted to capture the kids, all born after 1991, who were living through that.
When you are sat in your office coming up with an idea, it is easy to use politics as your starting point – showing people what is really happening in the world is, of course, important. But my work is not about the political aspect of that; it is about communicating a sense of intimacy. It is about getting inside a community and showing that there is a common, shared sense of emotion between people the world over, no matter what the situation is that they are living in. Or through.”
After carving his name as a surf photographer, but subsequently realising he was more drawn to portraiture, Daniel King left Australia and moved to Spain, then London, then New York, working as the assistant to iconic fashion image-maker Steven Klein. Following his work with Klein, King went on to work with another photographic legend back to the UK – heading down to Cornwall, where photographer David Sims was based. Inspired in part by Sims’ own oeuvre, King fine-tuned his approach and developed a stylised documentary vision. The photographs he has produced for Ukraine Youth are a great example of that, beautifully composed yet defined as real, something it is rare to see in today’s digitally enhanced world. These are not models; they are street-cast kids with whom he has developed a relationship, and a friendship.
Ukraine Youth: Between Days by Daniel King is published by Damiani.
