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Femen Activist Inna Shevchenko portrait by Guillaume Herbaut receives award at World Press Photo July 2, 2012

Posted by bohdan.warchomij in : Femen, Guillaime Herbaut, Institute for Artist Management, World Press Awards , comments closed

I have been following the activism of Femen in Ukraine on the internet with some interest and Guillaume Herbaut’s work for the Institute for Artist Management in Ukraine for some time.  The two subjects coincided at the last World Press Awards when a photo of Inna Shevchenko , one of Femen’s activists received a World Press  award that will be controversial because of the nudity. Inna has a wreathe of flowers tattooed on her body. Her salute in the photo is a militant act and as Herbaut explains to the British Journal of Photography it is an act that has defined Femen and their role in Ukrainian political life. Unmistakeably their protest is a political one. It has given them media power and credibility and impetus in their battle against sexism and political opportunism in Ukraine and Russia. The activists have been arrested many times.

“Guillaume Herbaut‘s work, called The New Amazons, has followed the Femen protest group. “Their goal is to fight sexual tourism and to educate women to be more assertive and powerful. They use their bodies as a weapon,” writes Herbaut on his site, recording the words of one of his subject: “At the beginning, we were so naive and we manifested with balloons shouting some slogans, but nobody listened us. But one day, we don’t know why, one of us, Kseniya Chatchko, undressed, and we saw that the people, the press started to see us and to listen to us.”

Speaking to BJP, Herbaut said: “I think what’s interesting is the fact that the naked body has become a militant act. We’re seeing a lot more political movements that use nakedness to expose their opinions.”

Herbaut’s image could, however, prove controversial for World Press Photo, Daphné Anglès, the award’s secretary, told BJP. “There are some countries where the exhibition won’t be able to go because of that specific image,” she says. Herbaut half expected this to happen. “I was very surprised when my agency told me that certain markets couldn’t publish these photos because the women depicted were naked. The US is one of these markets. I’m astonished, maybe because I’m French. For us, there are no issues with these kind of images. It’s very natural. There’s nothing shocking. I think it will be interesting to see how different countries react to that image.”"

Read more in the British Journal of Photography and on the Institute of Artist Management website.

Chornobyl’s Black Gold August 26, 2010

Posted by bohdan.warchomij in : Chornobyl, Disaster, Documentary, Institute for Artist Management, Photojournalism, Ukraine , add a comment

BLACK GOLD OF CHORNOBYL

Guillaume Herbaut

For someone with a profound interest in Ukrainian issues  it was a revelation  to come across  Guillaume Herbaut’s story on the pillaging of metal from the so called Exclusion Zone of Chornobyl. The story was posted in the blog  of the relatively new Institute for Artist Management and the work details the movement of radioactive metal  from the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant for cash. Each week, more than two hundred tons of radioactive metal  leave the exclusion zone. In the town of Chornobyl there are hotels and workers involved in the legal industry that the protection of the Zone has evolved into.

During the turmoil that followed the explosion of the fourth reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986, the authorities  buried  highly contaminated villages, created  burial grounds for tons of radioactive metal and encircled the town of Pripyat with a metal fence to prevent looting.

The reality of the exclusion zone and its precious cargo is different. In 2007, a stock of copper and nickel tubes coming from the Buriakovka burial ground was intercepted outside the exclusion zone. The metals contamination rate was 23 times higher than the legal standards. In May 2009, ten tons of metal disappeared. The radioactivity rate was above 30 000 microRems, a thousand times higher than the authorised level. During the night of September 10th 2009, a shipping of 25 tons of untreated metal was  intercepted by Ukrainian Intelligence Service. It mainly consisted of tubes found in the whereabouts of Reactor 4 and its radioactivity rate was thirteen times higher than the legal level.

According  to Herbaut and Bruno Masi there were 8 million tons of metal in the exclusion zone after the explosion. Today, only two million tons remain and  this stock  is valued at 1 billion hryvnias (100 million euros). It travels via  Eastern Ukrainian factories to Turkey and to China for the ultimate material reward.

http://stories.instituteartistmanagement.com/guillaumeherbaut-black-gold-of-chernobyl.html

Guillaume Herbaut copyright photo of Helicopters used during the Chornobyl disaster
Guillaume Herbaut copyright photo of Helicopters used during the Chornobyl disaster