f22 foto space presents From Dusk Till Dawn, a solo exhibition of Sergey Melnitchenko, the winner of the 2017 Leica Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award.
In 2015, Sergey worked in China as a nightclub dancer. He created a body of documentary and conceptual art photography. This exhibition features a selection of 88 such images taken between 2015 to 2017. The 77 black-and-white images portray the Chinese society from the intimate perspective of an outsider. What captured the eye of the photographer were not the glamorous or materialistic side of a fast growing economic power, but the fleeting moments of the everyday life of the average people, from a homeless man sleeping on a park bench, a street barber busy at work to the many emotionless faces inside a packed bus.
The 11 colour images are selected from his award-winning series Behind the Scenes. As a dancer, Sergey had the opportunity to take candid images in the backstage of the nightclub as ‘one of them’. He shows us the reverse, the invisible and often the harsh reality of working life inside the nightclub, the atmosphere, a part of which he became.
Like what Sergey said, ‘there’s no falsehood—it’s not a scene, it’s their everyday life, our life, or rather mine.’
Sergey Melnitchenko (b. 1991) is a Ukrainian photographer who started photography in 2009 after receiving his first digital camera from his grandmother. Since then, he has participated in more than 100 solo and group exhibitions around the world. He has been recognised with awards worldwide. In 2017, he won the Leica Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award for his Behind the Scenes series.
From Dusk Till Dawn—Sergey Melnitchenko Solo Exhibition
Vernissage: 5 June 2019, 9pm till late
Exhibition period: 6 June to 31 July 2019, 2pm to 7pm,
f22 foto space
5/F Amber Commercial Building,
70-74 Morrison Hill Road, Wanchai, Hong Kong
