Lviv, Ukraine, 2013.
Ireland
Dublin, 2014.
Ukrainian flags, 2015
After the Russian annexation of Crimea and incursion into east Ukraine, the Ukrainian flag has been far more prominent. Benches, walls, doors, and more or less any other paintable surface now feature the country's yellow and blue colours, commonly seen to represent the wheat fields and sky of the Ukrainian countryside.
Dennis Hopper
Dennis Hopper at his photo exhibition in the Manezh centre, Moscow, 2007.
Prague
Tour group fun, Prague, Czech Republic, 2006.
Kharkiv, Ukraine.
2007
Carpathian mountains, Ukraine.
In the town of Skole in the Ukrainian Carpathians, 2014.
Within Berat castle walls, Albania.
Berat, Albania, 2013.
Church during restoration
Kiev, Ukraine.
Graven Images: Stars and Crosses project published by The Calvert Journal
Stars and Crosses, my project on the visual culture of cemeteries in Russia and Ukraine, has been featured on The Calvert Journal, an online magazine of art and culture from Russia.
From the article:
London-based photographer Christopher Leigh started photographing Russian and Ukrainian cemeteries in 2007. At first his obsession was purely visual. "I was first struck by the visual nature of the memorials: the rather sad portraits that feature on many of them; the mixture of Soviet and religious motifs; the monumentality of the granite and marble used to sculpt the graves," explains Leigh. But as he kept exploring the cemetery grounds he realised that he was capturing a blueprint of values in a rapidly changing society, a strange mixture of traces from private and public lives: Orthodox crosses sit next to communist stars, military regalia and personal photos. "I particularly like the military man in Moscow’s Novodevichy cemetery who has a battery of Katyusha rockets mounted above him. The memorial to Boris Yeltsin — a giant ruffled Russian flag of stone and mosaic tiles — is also a favourite." Leigh's photos are full of hidden references, from religious iconography to 20th-century official portraiture, but on a deeper level they always evoke a sense of perfect stillness. "In cities like Moscow, cemeteries are one of the few places you can go for peace and quiet," says Leigh. "I think I will always be drawn back for that reason."
Picture published in Panorama magazine
This image, of a street band performing on Kiev's Independence Square (Maidan Nezalezhnosti) was published in the August 2014 edition of Panorama, the magazine of Ukraine International Airlines.
View the image on page 64, here:
Portraitist, Kiev, 2007.
Policeman.
Kiev, 2011.
Suzdal, Russia.
Shawls for sale, 2014.
Arcadia beach, Odessa, out of season.
Arcadia, Odessa, Ukraine, 2013.
Gjirokastër region, Albania, 2013.
Big skies in Albania.
Political cartoons, Kiev, Ukraine.
April 2014. Some of the political cartoons on display in Kiev, Ukraine, following the toppling of the Yanukovych regime.
Books, Southbank, London
March 2014.
Ukraine photographs published on LensCulture
Some of my photographs from Ukraine have been published on the excellent LensCulture website. See them here.
Bees and nails
Izmail, Ukraine, 2014.