A shoot is a story of meeting someone.
My name is Tata Melnyk.
I have been photographing people since 2003.
I have been photographing people since 2003.
Everyone arrives with a face kept for photographs.
I am interested in what is left when it comes off — for a minute, or for the last half hour of a shoot. The picture comes last;
what I actually work on is the meeting.
I learnt this in my grandfather’s darkroom, as his assistant and his model, watching my own face surface on a blank sheet. So I know that being looked at properly can be frightening.
The process mattered more than the print.
It still does.
what I actually work on is the meeting.
I learnt this in my grandfather’s darkroom, as his assistant and his model, watching my own face surface on a blank sheet. So I know that being looked at properly can be frightening.
The process mattered more than the print.
It still does.
Photographed by my friend Yulia, 2026
- With one person.I am there the whole time: talking, leading, stepping in.
The beginning is slow;
the truest portraits come at the end. - In a room full of people.Events, venues, teams at work. None of them came for me, so I step back and wait for the moment when people stop noticing me.
Photographed by my grandfather, 1986
BEFORE NOW.
2003
First film. The first paid work in photography came while I was still in television.
until 2014
Satellite coordinator at the TV channels Ukraine, Football and Football+, running live broadcasts. A live broadcast cannot be reshot.
2016
Georgia. There I worked only as a photographer: hotels, schools, brands, hundreds of portraits, and a scene of my own.
now
Kyiv. Among other reasons, because it matters to me to be on my own land.
BEHIND THE SCENES.
I don’t step out of the frame. Everything that ends up in it is part of what happened, and I was there too.
Let’s meet.
Tell me a little about yourself — or about your team.
