NEW YORK – The evocative photography of Lida Suchy was featured in The New York Times blog about photography, video and visual journalism called “Lens.”
“Life, Up Close, in a Ukrainian Village,” written by Jonathan Blaustein, told readers about a unique project by Ms. Suchy, who hails from Syracuse, N.Y.
The December 5 article begins:
“Growing up, Lida Suchy listened to her parents’ tales of the Ukrainian homeland, which they fled because of Soviet persecution during World War II. At night, her father, Zenon, told her bedtime stories about Baba Yaga, the Ukrainian witch, but also tales from his summers spent among the Hutsul culture, deep in the Carpathian Mountains of western Ukraine. …”
“These stories had a magical place in my mind,” said Ms. Suchy, who was born in 1960 and raised in North Dakota and upstate New York. “I was really interested in confronting the reality of what was there with myths he had created in my head about what home was like.”
Ms. Suchy was able to visit her father’s hometown, Kolomyia, after the fall of communism. That visit led her to a long-term photodocumentary project about the people of a village in the Hutsul region of Ukraine – a project she has conducted for 24 years.
“Portrait of a Village: The People of Kryvorivnya Ukraine, 1992-Present” is ongoing. The blog reported that she took new photos in the village this summer, with the support of a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Prior to that she had a Fulbright, as well as other grants and fellowships that supported her creative work on various projects.
Ms. Suchy received an M.F.A. from the Yale University School of Art. She has taught workshops in the United States, Ukraine and Italy, and given visiting artist presentations at Harvard, Syracuse University, the University of Toledo and Yale. She has had exhibits in the United States, Czechoslovakia and Slovakia. Her photographs are in public collections in New York, Paris, San Francisco and Kryvorivnya.
To read the story about Ms. Suchy’s project and see Ms. Suchy’s photos, go to http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/ 12/05/life-close-up-in-a-ukrainian-village/. (Readers may have seen The Ukrainian Weekly’s post about the blog on Facebook. At last count, The Weekly’s post reached 3,255 people and was shared 28 times.)