Barricade

Barricade

ABOUT

“Goat Swamp” (Ukr.: Kozyne Boloto) is the original name of the area in central Kiev where Maidan Nezalezhnosti or Independence Square found itself the epicentre of global tensions. Unlike sheep, goats do what they want and command special attention in folklore for their pugnacious and fertile abandonment to freedom.

So it is with the creative accoutrements of these anonymous street fighters, their homemade uniforms, molotovs, trophies, and tire barricades – the smoking language of the Revolt’s siege apparatus, as photographed by Donald Weber.

Barricade, shot over the crucial month of February, 2014, inventories the accoutrements and sites of EuroMaidan, giving us a visual language of the revolution that toppled a government and fomented a geopolitical crisis from central Kiev’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti or Independence Square. The book, a collaboration with Arthur Bondar, was published in 2014 (Schilt). examines the orchestrated chaos of a deadly street theatre. Weber focuses on cataloging the expressive impulses behind the protesters’ stoic dissimilitude and the almost holy rapture of their public self-assertion. The final barricade lies in the political language of representation itself.

Ukraine’s absolute polarities of past and future, its utter blackness and transcendent light, are the deeper themes of this interpretation. Barricade is a high-risk collaboration with the hundreds of brave men and women whose unquenchable thirst for change fuels hope for a new generation.

Architecture of Siege

Molotov Cocktail

Portrait Panoramas

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Book

Barricade: The Euromaidan Revolt, Schilt Publishing, Amsterdam, 2014
Donald Weber and Arthur Bondar, with texts by Larry Frolick and Donald Weber
Design: Victor Levie | MV LevievanderMeer, Amsterdam
Format: 22 x 24.5 cm (portrait)
72 pages with approx. 127 photos in full colour
ISBN: 9789053308417

Barricade, Special Edition (100)
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Barricade, the book, is a joint effort between Donald Weber and Arthur Bondar, bringing a dual perspective to the 2014 Ukrainian revolution born in Independence Square in Kiev. Writer Larry Frolick says, “Barricade is a high-risk collaboration with the hundreds of brave men and women whose unquenchable thirst for change fuels hope for a new generation.”

EXHIBITIONS

Somerset House, 2015 Sony World Photography Awards Exhibition, London, UK, 24 April – 10 May 2015.
Third Floor Gallery, Shift: Ukraine in Crisis, Cardiff, Wales, 3 May – 29 June 2014.
DokuFest, Barricade: The EuroMaidan Revolt, Prizren, Kosovo, 2014.

AWARDS

Canadian Donald Weber named Still Life Photographer of the Year at 2015 Sony World Photography Awards, the world’s largest photography competition, for his Molotov Cocktail series.

Barricade: The Euromaidan Revolt, winner in the 2015 PDN Photo Annual photo book awards, Photo Book category.