Mykhaylo Palinchak

Mykhaylo Mykhailovych Palinchak (; born in Uzhhorod, now Ukraine) is a Ukrainian photographer. Member of Ukrainian Photographic Alternative (2012), Ukrainian Association of Professional Photographers (2014), PEN Ukraine (2022). He was the official photographer of the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko in 2014–2019. Founder and curator of the gallery and online photography magazine Untitled and co-founder of the “Ukrainian Street Photography” group (Ukrainian Street Photography). Son of the photographer Mykhaylo Yuriiovych Palinchak.

Biography

Mykhaylo Palinchak was born on 29 January 1985 in Uzhhorod.

He began photographing in 2007. At the age of 13, his father gave him his first camera, with which he shot two rolls of film.

He graduated from the Faculty of International Economic Relations at Uzhhorod National University (BA), and from the Faculty of International Economics at the Institute of International Relations of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (2007). From 2008 to 2014, he was a member of the National Union of Photographers of Ukraine.

In 2013–2014, he spent three months photographing the events of the Revolution of Dignity.

He worked as the official photographer of the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, and as a chief consultant of the main department of information policy of the Office of the President of Ukraine.

Since 2022, he has documented the consequences of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine and has visited territories liberated from Russian occupation. Based on photographs taken during these trips, he created the project Highlight. In 2024–2025, with grant support from Magnum Photos, he created the project Occupation Diaries, which became part of the international visual multimedia project Beyond the Silence, curated by Kateryna Radchenko, the director of the Odesa Photo Days festival and an art curator.

Works

He has participated in more than 200 group and solo exhibitions in various countries around the world, including: Ukraine, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Serbia, North Macedonia, the United Kingdom, Poland, the United States, Georgia, Germany, France, Belgium, Belarus, and Estonia.

Palinchak's first reportage photographs were published in the magazine Reporter. After that, his works appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Le Monde, Deutsche Welle, The Times, Esquire, Reuters, The Telegraph, The Wall Street Journal and Der Spiegel. Overall, his work has been published by Bird in Flight, Dagens ETC, De Tijd, Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, Foreign Policy, Frontliner, Gazeta Wyborcza, Grazia, Libération, Magnum Photos, New York Magazine, Paris Match, Le Figaro, Reporters, Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ Magazin), Society, The Kyiv Independent, and De Standaard.

He is the author of the photobooks Anamnesis (2020), Maidan Faces (2020), and the project Occupation Diaries (2022). He contributed to the books Living the war: Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3, Ukraine: Love + War, Flash. Ukrainian photography 2022–2023, «Сміливі нести світло» (Brave to bring the light), Ukraine: A War Crime, The Information Front, «Нічний ефір» (Night broadcast), «Незалежні. Історія сучасної України у світлинах кращих документалістів», UPHA: Made in Ukraine, and «Альтернативна археологія: Ужгород».

In 2020, L'Officiel included Palinchak in a list of the most in-demand Ukrainian photographers abroad.

Since 2022, he has actively covered the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Style

He is known primarily as a street and reportage photographer. Palinchak prefers documentary photography without authorial interference, with meticulous selection of the frames already after the shoot:

Working as a photographer is 80% waiting. And that is probably harder than the shooting itself... For beginner photographers I would advise photographing everything. And later you will choose from all of it what you need... Photography is a source of continuous disappointment. Because you constantly get it not the way you want. Either you missed the moment, or the light falls wrong, or everything turns out not the way you imagined it. More often it doesn't work than it works.

My only task is to do it as objectively as possible, without interfering with the frame, within the event. So that people pay less attention to me.

Cultural reviewer Yana Kachkovska of Suspilne describes Palinchak's use of the impact of nature and time on photographs as an artistic device in the series "Maidan Faces":

In 2019, Mykhaylo Palinchak returned to Instytutska Street, the place where dozens of protesters were killed during the Revolution of Dignity. On the trees he saw their portraits, left by relatives and friends. Over the years these images faded, wore away, some became covered with mold. Just as time erases our memory. The project “Maidan Faces” records this process of disappearance. Palinchak looks at the physical destruction of the photographs as a metaphor for forgetting.

Recognition

Awards

Exhibitions

Sources

• Radchenko, K. Negotiation rooms. Photo project // Ukrainska Pravda. — 2022. — 30 January.

External links

• Official website
• Mykhaylo Palinchak // ARTELECT
• Untitled, a magazine about Ukrainian photography.