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Documentary

Slide #35115
Valery Melnikov

Photographer

Valery Melnikov

Gray zone

First time I visited the Donbass region was at the beginning of summer of 2014, right at the beginning of the military conflict. People of Donbass truly hoped the war would end quickly, and peace would come back to their long-suffering land. Five years went by. Along the contact line of the fighting sides, so called Gray Zone has been created. This is a conditional name for the territories without a specific status, with no official government or law enforcement. People's lives are in constant danger because of the fighting. This protracted long lasting conflict and the foggy future turned the entire Donbass region into the territory of the Gray Zone. Zones without any clear boundaries in space and time. The Gray Zone is not only a territory, a piece of land, it is a sensation of a person completely immersed in the darkness of the unknown in the face of war. This is the vital state of existential loneliness of a person who has lost all the hope.

Valery Melnikov

Born in Nevinnomyssk, Valery Melnikov studied journalism in Stavropol, Russia. His photographic career began when he started to work for The North Caucasus newspaper. For ten years he was a staff photographer for Kommersant publishing house and since 2009 for international news agency Rossiya Segodnya.     He has dedicated himself to documenting the political and social life of societies in conflict. Valery’s professional biography includes coverage of Chechen war, conflict between Georgia and South Ossetia, Lebanese war in 2006, uprising of Mali Republic, Syrian civil war. In 2014, Valery began documenting war in Eastern Ukraine. This work continues in his current ongoing project, Black days of Ukraine, about ordinary civil people who became the participants of the military confrontation against their will.    Valery has received many awards for his work, including World Press Photo, Magnum Photography Awards, Pictures of the Year International, Sony World Photography awards, LensCulture Visual Storytelling Awards. His work has been exhibited in France, Austria, Italy, USA, Germany, UK, Russia and other countries. Valery currently lives in Moscow.