{"id":99792,"date":"2026-04-13T00:16:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T22:16:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/punkt.hu\/?p=99792"},"modified":"2026-04-13T00:16:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T22:16:28","slug":"this-story-is-not-only-about-chornobyl-as-a-tragedy-but-also-about-how-memory-survives-a-conversation-with-maxim-dondyuk-on-his-exhibition-at-mai-mano-house-in-budapest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/punkt.hu\/en\/2026\/04\/13\/this-story-is-not-only-about-chornobyl-as-a-tragedy-but-also-about-how-memory-survives-a-conversation-with-maxim-dondyuk-on-his-exhibition-at-mai-mano-house-in-budapest\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThis story is not only about Chornobyl as a tragedy, but also about how memory survives\u201d \u2013 A conversation with Maxim Dondyuk on his exhibition at Mai Man\u00f3 House in Budapest"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The exhibition Maxim Dondyuk: In the Zone of Oblivion \u2013 The Chornobyl Archives<\/em> is open to the public at Mai Man\u00f3 House from March 1 to May 17. The internationally acclaimed Ukrainian photographer and visual artist, born in 1983, has spent five years in the Exclusion Zone documenting the territory gradually reclaimed by nature. Over time, his focus shifted toward the documents left behind in houses, apartments, and various institutions\u2014rolls of negatives, photographs, letters, and postcards. Dondyuk\u2019s project, the Chornobyl Archive<\/em>, currently comprises 20,000 items alongside his own photographs, from which the Budapest exhibition also presents a selection. On the occasion of the exhibition, we spoke with the artist.<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>

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In 1986, you were only three years old. Although at that age we don\u2019t yet have complex concepts of a collective tragedy, pivotal moments are often captured in the minds of young children. What is your earliest, direct, and personal memory associated with Chernobyl or the period that followed?<\/strong><\/p>\n

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I was only three years old when the disaster happened, so you are correct I don\u2019t have a clear visual memory of that day itself. But the word Chornobyl has been present in my life since childhood. My younger brother was born a year after the accident. He spent a significant part of his early years in hospitals. As a child, I didn\u2019t fully understand why this was happening, but I remember the atmosphere of constant concern around him. For me, this was the first personal encounter with the consequences of the Chornobyl catastrophe.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>

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Between 2016 and 2021, you spent five years traveling through the exclusion zone. What was the impulse that started you on this journey, and at what point did photographic documentation turn into conscious \u201cvisual archaeology\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n

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When I first went to the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone I didn\u2019t know what I was looking for, or why I went there. But I needed solitude and silence. This emptied territory became a refuge for me from the chaos of war which started right after the Revolution of 2013\u20132014. I began exploring post-apocalyptic landscapes where nature had taken over, erasing traces of human presence. As I spent more and more time in the Zone, I started looking not at events, but at emptiness, and at what remains when people are gone. I began to feel emptiness as a form of memory, and I reconsidered my view of documentary practice. I started working more slowly, more calmly, with more attention to what remains after events. The project began as a visual study of abandoned land, where life continues but people are no longer there. Over time, it became a way to connect with a past that existed long before the nuclear power plant. As I went deeper into the villages, I found letters, family photographs, and film \u2013 fragments of lives that no one had time to take away. It was no longer only about documenting a place, but about working with what remains. The work moved from documentation toward something else \u2013 a process of collecting, preserving, and rethinking these fragments. Not only to record, but to understand what remains after people are torn out of their own lives.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>

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Photo: Maxim Dondyuk: From the series Chapter II \u2013 Repercussion, 2017 \u00a9 Maxim Dondyuk<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n<\/div><\/div>

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During the project, you rescued a vast amount of material \u2013 nearly 20,000 documents \u2013 from decay. While searching through piles of debris in abandoned houses, what criteria did you use to decide what would be included in the archive and what would be left behind in the ruins forever? <\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Today it seems the world has endless memory in the cloud. But not long ago memory existed in a single copy. One photograph. One negative. One album. If a house burns down or people leave forever, it is not an archive in some abstract sense that disappears. It is the only copy of a life. From 2016 to 2021, together with my wife, Iryna, we made dozens of expeditions to the Exclusion Zone. We walked hundreds of kilometers and explored more than 20 abandoned villages, house by house. Today the archive includes more than 400 rolls of film and over 20,000 artifacts \u2013 photographs, letters, and documents, each digitized with GPS tagging that connects the object to the house where it was found. Each house and family is assigned an ID. This is how a detailed visual map of a lost world gradually takes shape: an object remains connected to the place where it was found. I didn\u2019t make decisions about what was important and what was not. I collected everything I could find \u2013 film and paper artifacts. I always believe that everything should be preserved if possible, because with time you never know what will become important and what will not. It is the same principle I follow in my own archive \u2013 I never delete images. For decades these artifacts rotted under layers of debris and dirt, some damaged by time, weather, and radiation, others surprisingly well preserved. When I hold a wet negative in my hands, I can dry it, scan it, preserve it. This is a small refusal of disappearance.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>

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You once stated that, as smiling faces, wedding photos, and family moments emerged from the cleaned films, Chernobyl was no longer exclusively associated with death and tragedy for you. How did this realization reshape your relationship with the project and your own creative methods? <\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In the Chornobyl Archive, three things come together for me: photography as trace, anthropology as attention to everyday life, and history as a force that changes the meaning of that trace over time. When these found photographs were made, no one knew what would happen next. They were simply images of life: family, home, a celebration. But I found them after the Chornobyl accident. And now, they carry the knowledge of what happened later. That is why we look at them differently: a second layer appears that didn\u2019t exist then. This shift became fundamental for me. Time changes not only the material, but the meaning and the weight of photographs. Even the most simple, ordinary image \u2013 a family moment, a wedding, a daily scene \u2013 can acquire a completely different significance over time. In this sense, the archive became a bridge between past and present. It returns what disappears first: everyday life, family memory, traditions, and rituals. It takes Chornobyl out of the familiar image of ruins and shows the lives of people before the accident \u2013 not as an illustration of catastrophe, but as an independent layer of history. I also realized that the archive reveals something that was not always visible before. Ukrainian identity still emerges through these photographs and letters \u2013 in everyday life, in celebrations, in language, in gestures. I don\u2019t think people at that time realized that this was an act of preserving Ukrainian culture. But today all of this can be de-archived and reread. And now, when I think about my other long-term body of work, when I photographed the revolution, the war, everyday life in Ukraine before the full-scale invasion, I realize: I also have an archive that is lying dormant. Much of it I have hardly shown. It exists as a mass: thousands of frames, notes, fragments, faces, places that have already disappeared, like memory, like a flow that has not yet been shaped. Documentary can only be the first step. You collect, you record, you build a body of material. But then a second step is needed: time. It adds new layers. The material needs to rest, and you need distance, so you can return with a different perspective. Not to make it better, but finally to see what you couldn\u2019t see then. Documentary was where I started. Today I work post-documentary, shaping what remains into a form that can be read in the present, so that a new meaning can emerge.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>

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Found film in Chernobyl Zone, Rudnya-Veresnya village.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n<\/div><\/div>

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Although field research in the Zone has been on hiatus since 2021, the organization and processing of the material have been ongoing ever since. How do you see the future of the Chornobyl Archive now? Is the interpretation and publication of the archive your primary goal currently, or do you plan to return to collecting?<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine disrupted my work on the Chornobyl project. As a result, I was forced to move the materials to Europe, where in the frames of the fellowship from the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination (Paris) I currently continue the process of scanning and rethinking what I collected. I think of the archive as a flow that lives and changes. I don\u2019t want to put a full stop where the material is still alive. I want to stay close to this archive and observe how it unfolds on its own: where it leads, what it reveals, what form it takes. My task is not to stop the flow, but to follow it. At the same time, this flow already has several forms that are clear to me. First, I want to create an online archive-museum: a multimedia map where all the found and digitized artifacts will be gathered and connected to specific houses and the data we were able to recover. Former residents of these places, their relatives, and friends will be able to find \u201ctheir\u201d home, see what has been preserved, and request digital copies. Second, alongside this social layer, I want to develop artistic forms \u2013 several books and museum exhibitions.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>

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Photo: \u00a9 Maxim Dondyuk: From the series Chapter II \u2013 Repercussion, 2017<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n<\/div><\/div>

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The material exhibited at the Mai Man\u00f3 House is deeply layered: it spans from detached documentation through personal destinies to total abstraction. What advice would you give to visitors on how to approach this exhibition to truly connect with the stories behind the images?<\/strong><\/p>\n

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I would suggest approaching the exhibition not as a linear narrative, but as a space where different layers of time coexist and continuously reshape each other. Some images show everyday life before the disaster. Others have changed so much that they have stopped being documents in the usual sense. The slow decay of the archive doesn\u2019t simply erase the image \u2013 it transforms it. What we see is the visible work of time. These negatives were once ordinary photographs. Silver in the emulsion fixed the light, and the image seemed stable. Decades passed, and the material began to change. The emulsion reacted with time, radiation, moisture, temperature. And the image became different, as if the life that was photographed also passed through decay, loss, disappearance. Now we see an almost abstract surface, but inside, traces still hold: a silhouette, a gesture, an object, a fragment of space. The negative becomes an artifact of duration. For me, this transformation is important. It reflects how memory actually works: fragments survive, others disappear, and some change form completely. So rather than trying to \u201cunderstand\u201d each image, I would invite visitors to stay with them \u2013 to spend time, to move between these layers, and to allow the images to unfold. Because the story here is not only about Chornobyl as a tragedy, but about how memory survives, how it changes, and how new meanings continue to emerge over time. The exhibition at Mai Man\u00f3 House is a space where these different temporalities \u2013 past, loss, and transformation \u2013 exist simultaneously.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>

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