This year, the Gmunden.photo 2022 exhibition has a Ukrainian focus and was created as an artistic dialogue between Austrian and Ukrainian photo masters.

Main photo: Hromadske - Ukrainian independent media

In his “The Stereoscope and the Stereograph” (The Atlantic Monthly, June 1859) Oliver Wendell Holmes famously calls the newest reproduction medium of his era “mirror with memory”.

Gmunden.photo understands its mission in the same way. It tries to reflect the most actual contemporaneity through lenses of diverse views, belief systems and strategies of expression. In the sense of being thoroughgoing witness of its times, this year gmunden.photo just has to react to an imminent state of urgency and invites Ukrainian artists in a dialogue with Austrian photographers and video-makers.

Gmunden.photo's exhibition containers play a role of the transfer of confronting aspects of the experience of turbulent existential circumstances Ukrainian artists face during ongoing war.

It is very painful that Ukraine has to fight for membership in European civilization at the cost of thousands of lives of its best citizens. But the only way to overcome the pain and helplessness from encountering violence is active resistance, confidence in the power of good, unity around universal values

Yana Barinova

Gmunden.photo 2022 is happening under curatorial leadership of Yana Barinova (Kyiv, former Director of the Department of Culture Kyiv City) and Boris Ondreička (Bratislava, Artistic Director of viennacontemporary).

Out of 18 artists, there will be works by 10 Ukrainian photographers, including:

• Anatoliy Babiychuk
• Julia Beliaeva
• Yana Franz
• Igor Gaidai
• Hromadske - Ukrainian independent media
• Maks Levin
• Evgeniy Maloletka
• Maksym Mazur
• Yevgen Nikiforov
• Yelyzaveta Servatynska
• Anna Artaker
• Olivia Coeln
• Lisa Holzer
• Rainer Hosch
• Markus Krottendorfer
• Markus Oberndorfer
• Hans Schabus
• Jun Yang

The exhibition will also take special screenings of Ukrainian and Austrian films. Among them the Ukrainian TV series Mykola Rydnyi "Film of Emergency", the film directed by Kateryna Gornostay "Stop - Zemlia" and the first special screening of the trailer of the documentary "Mariupol. Hope is not lost."

The photo exhibition Gmunden.photo 2022 will run to August 14