The series of images is based on the contradiction between the desire of the authors of the selfies to leave themselves in the memory of a window phone and the realization that the only way these photos will go is to the trash can.
The idea appeared in the summer of 2017. I was going to shoot the preparations for the Independence Day parade. I remember it started to rain on Khreshchatyk and I hid in a hardware store. At the stand, I started looking at smartphones: watching what people were shooting in the galleries. Visitors and sellers don't always delete test photos. I downloaded a few to myself via Bluetooth and the next day showed the collected pictures to Sasha Rudensky. At the time, she was teaching an intensive photography course in Kyiv organized by Viktor Marushchenko. She shows this project to her students at Yale University when they are taking the topic "Archive".
"Over the past three years, I have managed to collect six thousand photos from cities such as: Kyiv, Cherkasy, Lysychansk, Odesa, Chernivtsi, Uzhhorod, Lviv. Sellers don't mind, you can do anything with the photos. By right, these images do not belong to anyone, they can be considered public. Mostly, they are taken to test the front camera and left in the phone without thinking about their fate.
In May 2018, a set of laws governing the protection of personal data (General Data Protection Regulation) will come into force in the European Union. They are aimed at restricting the right of EU citizens to store and use information about other individuals without their prior consent. Ukraine is on its way to European integration and adoption of its laws and regulations.
This project explores the right to publish photos taken in mobile phone shops by visitors. In this work, I want to blur the line between privacy and publicity. By absurdizing the protection of personal data without breaking the law, I want to give the viewer the opportunity to comprehend personal insecurity by referring to the adopted European regulations (GDPR).
