I started studying to photograph by myself as a side project apart from my university education as an electrical engineer. It fascinated me and after getting my degree and having tried a few different jobs I became a photographer at a small local newspaper. My experience there included reporting and some travelling. In a while I started working for the Ukrainian news agency “URA-Inform”, and later for the photo service of “UIIAN”, the Ukrainian Independent Informational Agency of News, which is one of the largest in Ukraine producers and suppliers of political, social, and business information. My works for UIIAN are available at: http://photo.unian.net/ukr/author/792/.
When working at UIIAN, I started a project about chaika (which is a name of an old national Ukrainian boat) “SPAS”, built in 2007 by a group of national enthusiasts. I went on a couple of trips with the crew, through Ukraine and to Georgia, and made a set of photographs about that. You can see them at http://kupriyan.com/photo/ship/index_eng.html. At one point this got in a way of my press photo job at UIIAN, so I had to leave.
Now for the past six months I’ve been doing a new project, “The Tortured”, the purpose of which is to tell stories of people who’ve been abused by Ukrainian militiamen and to raise awareness of their rights violation.
{ Dmitro Kupriyan