Donald Weber

Currently residing in Toronto, Ontario and Kiev, Ukraine

Website: www.donaldweber.com

Work statement
At the core, my work is an examination into the curse of power, the wounds it inflicts on those who don't have it, and probably never will. It's a universal story, really. One that we can all identify with. For if we don't quest for power, what do we really quest for? What's important about this work, in my view, is that it reveals the fateful intersection of history and the human soul. The West has its own versions of materialism; we may pretend that these people and their sad condition have nothing to do with us. But something in their eyes tells us more than we want to know. We are being tested, all of us. These photos confront us with the inescapable truth: life is a journey through a dark wood. We must take it one step at a time.

Bio
Originally from Toronto, Canada, Don is an award-winning photographer currently residing in Kiev, Ukraine. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007, he also received the Lange-Taylor Documentary Prize and a World Press Award in 2006. Amongst other citations, Weber was named one of PDN's 30 in 2008 and an Emerging Photo Pioneer by American Photo Magazine. Prior to photography, Don worked as an architect for Rem Koolhaas' Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He has also received a Governor's General Gold Medal for Architecture while working in Canada. Don has exhibited widely and has shown work at galleries and festivals worldwide. As a documentary photographer, Don believes in the power of the medium and has been involved in three major campaigns to provoke change. In 2006, he was a part of C::20, a traveling exhibit at the United Nations and Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, looking at the impact of Chernobyl on its 20th anniversary. As a part of the VII photo agency, he contributed to the 60th Anniversary celebrations of the Declaration of Human Rights, exhibited in over 50 cities worldwide. As a photographer for the NGO War Child, his photography from seven war-torn nations was shown at twelve University campuses and hundreds of high schools across Canada. His work from Ukraine won the Grand Prize for the 2007 PHODAR Photography Biennial in Bulgaria. In 2008 he had his first solo show at the Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, Oregon and in 2009 his second will be a featured exhibit during Contact Toronto, one of the world's largest photography festivals. His Guggenheim Fellowship allowed him to continue work on a book about life in Russia. It's about the curse of power, and the wounds it inflicts on those who don't have it. It's the 18th Century with jets flying overhead. This work was completed in the Fall of 2008 and is entitled 'White Nights, Russia After the Gulag.' His first book, 'Bastard Eden, Our Chernobyl,' will be released Fall 2008 by photolucida as part of the Critical Mass book publishing prize.