Alexander Chekmenev. Born 1969, Luhansk, eastern Ukraine.
Chekmenev started his career in 1988 as an apprentice photographer in a studio in his home city of Luhansk. In search of his own style, he began photographing people on the streets and in their homes to show the devastating effects of the economic crisis after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In particular, his work gave an intimate and unique perspective on the turmoil caused to the Donbas mining industry as Ukraine underwent significant social and political upheaval. He moved to Kyiv in 1997, where he still works today as a photojournalist, using the medium to document the progress made and the challenges faced by his country and its people through peacetime, revolutions and war.
Chekmenev’s work has been published in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, TIME Magazine, TIME LightBox, The New Yorker Photo Booth, Quartz Magazine, The Guardian, Vice Magazine, WIRED Magazine, and The Atlantic Magazine, as well as The Times Magazine and The Sunday Times.
A portrait of President Volodymyr Zelensky taken in April 2022 for the cover of TIME magazine was sold for 150,000 euros on December 15, 2022, at the Forbes Ukraine charity auction in Kyiv. All of the money was donated to charity to buy generators for children’s institutions damaged under Russian occupation. Another copy of the Zelensky portrait was sold at auction on November 22, 2023, for $150,000 as part of a campaign by Ukrainska Pravda. All of the money raised went to support the Air Command “Skhid” air defense unit in eastern Ukraine.
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