Oleksandr Hnatenkoam

TV in my Head
By Oleksandr Hnatenkoam

Oleksandr Hnatenkoam (August 27, 1986) is a surreal photographer from Ukraine. His work has placed (often first) in multiple competitions and has also been featured in numerous exhibitions.

"In the search for reality you come across many things, some that are simple, some old, some new, some that are eye-catching, in colour or in monochrome, visible things and some hidden from view, some things with sense and some without. Surreal moments are born out of this." Oleksandr Hnatenkoam

The above photo was taken when he was exploring abandoned buildings in 2006 after picking up some dry cleaning. He and a friend came across a room in an old school filled with boxes of monitors and after taking into account everything he had with him - including the dry cleaning - the above photo came into being.

"Sometimes really crazy accidents happen, and if you are searching for them in your head, you will for sure find them! And create something out of nothing!" Oleksandr Hnatenkoam

I like that this photo wasn't planned in advance but was created "on the spot" just with what he had available to him. Particularly also that he didn't disregard the suit from his dry cleaning which wasn't originally intended to be used in his photography, and that he only happened to have with him at the time.

For a photo that was created on the spot, "TV in my Head" is certainly a powerful image. There have, of course, been several images over the years making statements about what watching television does to people, their thinking and their behaviours, and this is immediately what this image brought to my mind.

The lines of monitors are cleverly placed so that they're not just in straight lines but slightly curving backwards and outwards and carefully aligned with the photo's perspective in such a way that it puts one in mind of antennas and radio waves. Not to mention that they lead the eye directly to the main focus of the photo: the man in the suit with the monitor on his head.

A few interpretations of this photo come to mind:

1. The monitors are all roughly straight on to the camera and lined up in what could be considered a confronting way. There are a large number of them in between the viewer and the man in the photo which could indicate how technology isolates people or stands between them and real human relations. The lines certainly put me in mind of lines of soldiers in an army ready to march for war.

2. The juxtaposition of the suit (an upper class man) in this run down place also makes a powerful statement. Only "rich" people (the average person in a developed country is also considered rich here) can afford to own a television (or several, as people in today's developed world do) yet here the man is in an old abandoned room that is clearly falling apart. Has television or technology taken over him so completely that he has neglected the world around him? The number of monitors as well as the one on his head would indicate so.

3. The man is also barefoot and appears to have no shirt on underneath which could be interpreted as the suit being an attempt at normalcy when in reality everything is falling apart.

4. From the man's posture, it could also be said that he is even struggling against an addiction to television or technology, that he's actually trying to stop it from taking over his mind. Perhaps a losing battle.