Tattoos of War by Sergey Melnitchenko
Sergey Melnitchenko began his Tattoos of War series in the spring of 2023. This black-and-white photo project features portraits of individuals—mostly the photographer’s friends and relatives—posed against projected images of the full-scale war in Ukraine. Through this technique, Melnitchenko documents the visual imprints of painful memories, reflections, emotions, and trauma shared by his subjects and by many Ukrainians.
Participants choose the image and memory that hurt them most. But for most Ukrainians, there have been so many such moments during the war that selecting just one is almost impossible. The horrors of war are projected onto the subjects’ faces and bodies, forming a layered image—a symbolic “tattoo” that stays with them forever. There are millions of Ukrainians, and each carries their own invisible tattoo.
When asked whether he has chosen his own, Melnitchenko replies that he is still “in the process of choosing [his] worst memory.” Most likely, he says, it will be an image of the house where his friend Kseniia, 33, and her mother were killed by a Russian missile in September 2022 in his hometown of Mykolaiv. They were sleeping at home. One morning, they didn’t wake up.
“I’m not mentally ready for this shot yet. I need to gather my strength, and it’s not easy,” he says. “Everything that is happening now is our common destiny, our history—written in blood every day.”
The Tattoos of War project is fully analog. Melnitchenko shoots with a medium-format Mamiya RB67 camera, develops the film, and scans it. Ideally, the images are printed using hand-made silver gelatin prints—a method he believes enhances the emotional power of both the photographs and the stories behind them. During the shoots, he also records video footage, which he plans to use in future exhibitions.
The series is intended to resonate with Ukrainian audiences—reminding them of their shared experience—and to help international viewers better understand the reality Ukrainians live through. The work departs from strict documentary photography, using storytelling and a blend of conceptual and art photography to express emotion and memory. Melnitchenko also envisions expanding the project through interviews, additional video material, and new storylines.
Sergey Melnitchenko was born in Mykolaiv, Ukraine. He began photographing in 2009 and founded the MYPH school of conceptual and art photography in 2018. Sergey has participated in over 200 solo and group exhibitions, fairs, and festivals worldwide. Over the past seven years, he has organized and curated more than 50 projects and exhibitions showcasing work by MYPH students. He is the recipient of numerous national and international awards. In 2017, he became the first Ukrainian to win the Leica Oskar Barnack Award Newcomer (Berlin, Germany), and he was nominated for the Foam Paul Huf Award in both 2020 and 2023. He is also a 2023-2024 recipient of the Alexander Tutsek Photography Grant. His works have been acquired by the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung (Munich) and are held in private and public collections across the world.