CLOSENESS — photographs by Kateryna Chumachenko
Photography exhibition in a digital installation
8–10 October 2026 · foyer, Providur’s Palace, Zadar
During festival hours on all three days. Free admission.
A selection of photographs is presented on a large-format digital display throughout the exhibition.
As part of the 20th edition of the Festival of Tolerance, Kateryna Chumachenko’s work explores closeness as a relationship to people, space and the places to which we gradually come to belong. Her photographs begin with acts of looking, with light and with everyday scenes through which such relationships are formed.
In Chumachenko’s portraits, people and their surroundings rarely exist as separate elements. Sea, rock, open paths, wind and light participate in the image alongside the body and clothing. The figure is carefully composed, yet the natural environment retains its own force and unpredictability. Much of the tension within her portraiture emerges from this encounter.
Light plays a central role in shaping the atmosphere of her work. The warm tones of late afternoon, soft interior illumination and contrasts between expressive clothing and quieter landscapes give the photographs a distinct visual character. The movement of fabric, the line of a path or the position of the body guides the eye and connects the subject to the surrounding space.
Her approach to interiors is more restrained. The human figure may be absent from the frame, yet the space does not appear empty. Cups on a table, light falling across wood, the arrangement of objects or a view beyond the room suggest habitation and everyday life. Chumachenko does not photograph space merely as architecture. She is interested in the feeling it can produce and in the way a viewer may imagine it as a place of personal experience.
This is where her portraits and photographs of space meet. In both, atmosphere is essential. An image is not intended merely to show what a person or place looks like, but to convey something of its character and to allow the viewer to draw closer.
This approach also reflects the way Chumachenko herself speaks about photography. For her, visual content has become part of the way we encounter people, places and services. Photography is therefore more than a record. It shapes a first encounter and influences the way we respond to what we see.
This understanding of the image also carries particular significance in the context of her own life. Following her arrival in Croatia from Ukraine, photography, already part of her interest in visual communication, became her profession. A new personal and professional environment also became a space for work, observation and creation.
These photographs should therefore not be read as a document of displacement. They speak about life after arrival: work, everyday routines and the gradual formation of a relationship with a place that was once unfamiliar.
The title Closeness emerges from these relationships: between person and space, photographer and subject, image and viewer. It evokes the moment when what once seemed distant gradually becomes part of one’s own experience.
Photography: Kateryna Chumachenko.