Dimitri Afanasenko, Dima or Dmytro, was born in the USSR, at the end of the Soviet Era. He grew up in Sevastopol, a historically complex city, and was the son of brilliant scientists and art enthusiasts; a poet as a father, a mother working in culture centres. Then everything changed. The “restructuring”. It took some adjustment. Entering market economy, overcoming the disruptions of history, once again. It is a hard thing to fathom, for us in the West, how violent the Perestroïka was.
In the midst of all this, Dimitri pursued an academic training in arts and humanities. Sevastopol Art School. Lviv National Academy of Arts. Outstanding paintings already at this point, first expositions, surrealist themes, figurative and Fauvist in colors, in strokes, leading us to question our sense of reality and dreams, our interiority. At 16, he left for Paris. He was brilliantly accepted into the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts. In Dominique Gauthier’s workshop, he continued painting and drawing; he discovered photography and grew a passion for ancient techniques, film photography, darkroom developing — at a time when digital photography was everywhere. Then photography took over completely. “Sculpting in time”, in turn. Crazy about Tarkovski, New Romantic and mystic in his own way, he would not rest until he had documented how history took over matter. Landscapes, still lifes. Only so many portraits, as the representation of people took to him a sacred dimension. Books were his favorite substance. Photo-books, object-books. He took pleasure in ephemeral works as well, posters left to the whims of the weather, installation art bound to disintegrate. We are but passersby in this world.
Until the end, Dima was a witness of his time, that he questioned with a rare intellectual and sensitive sharpness. Paris, Pripyat, Berlin, Kyiv, Marrakesh, New-York, Tokyo, Sevastopol, Crimea… This Soviet, Ukranian, Russian and then French exile, who chose Paris as the destination of his uprooting — artistic, cosmopolitan city that was so dear to his heart — shows us in impermanence what sticks, remains, and exhorts us to seek beauty in every corner of this world.
« You gave me your mud and I have turned it into gold », Charles Baudelaire
Please find here an overview of his work in photography.