Maksym Galyuk V. 2
The latest photography by Maksym Galyuk ranges from urban desolation to an illuminated winter wasteland to sensual and erotic play within the solitary alleys and bridges of Astoria. He is a Ukrainian photographer based out of New York who operates his own studio known as White Summer Production, a firm specializing in high-production-value and cinematic photography and film.
We will find in these photographs a consistency of capturing a figure in solitude within the most busiest portions of New York City. As a result, most of these scenes are captured at night or in a remote alley or under a bridge to draw unwanted attention and precise focus on the figure. The most interesting of these photographs would be the Space Dust series, which entails a figure in the dead set of winter with goggles and a face scarf trekking the urban night and carefully illuminated by station lights or distant skyscrapers in focus. Maksym’s mastery of perfectly capturing the illuminated figure seems otherworldly. With his face covered and facing either towards the viewer or off into the distance, the figure stands as an ominous sentinel who has just emerged from a winter wasteland, as if on an assigned mission.
The Space Dust series perfectly conveys the desolation and nihilism of the city. New York is known to be great, but also bleak and intimidating. With this in mind, Space Dust precisely captures a wasteland exploration theme during the most remote times and areas of the busiest city on earth. Maksym Galyuk has captured the essence of despair within the spirit of New York, the city will grind you down, much like a barren wasteland, but the masked figure continues forth and stands with diligence as if focused on his task.
With the Astoria series, a portion of these are a set of sensual and erotic photographs with the model wearing a short skirt and a cropped blowse. Her movements, with twists and turns, motions her skirt and blowse to reveal the upper portion of her chest and thighs. Such erotic and sensual posing contrasts against an industrialized bridge and isolated alley to reveal an aesthetic of raw passion against the backdrop of cold steel and concrete. Maksym reveals to us, even in the stone-cold realms of the city, how he uses play and sensual expression to finalize his oeuvre as a personalized version of frolic. She is like an unattainable sensual goddess luring men to their demise within the cold grasps of the city’s outskirts.
In the Fork Eyewear series, these are fashion shots of a male model captured in a manner of documentary photography. In three particular striking photographs, he walks amongst an industrial park covered in flooded puddles to sitting on a bench by the Hudson River to standing out on the rocks, right by the treacherous waters with a foggy landscape of skyscrapers behind him. In these scenes, Maksym Galyuk portrays the figure as a confident loner who faces the elements of the city without hesitation, whether fog, rain, or storm.
Conveying virtuosity with his camera, Maksym Galyuk personalizes New York to the whims of his imagination. Through cinematic models who face the bleakest aspects of the streets to illuminations which hint at a wasteland and also offer a shining hope within the desolate cityscape to hinted narratives which foreshadow the carefully-directed scenes in his shots, he prevails. Maksym Galyuk unravels the great enigma of New York as a playground which can be controlled, with the right imagination. His models are dominant, his angles and compositions are investigative, cinematic, and cool. Maksym is as much a storyteller as he is an image-maker, portraying isolated instances of dramatic engagement with the audience as we are connected to this figures as engaging in an urban adventure. A quest of dominating the city, before the streets crush you.
