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.
- With one person.I am there the whole time: talking, directing, 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
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.
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
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.
