Dima’s work is powerful, expressive and engaging, about a subject we have a lot to say about. War. His personal journey being embedded with soldiers in Afghanistan gives us a vision into a place and mindset most of us will never know or be able to understand. I spend time with this work, learning from each frame, exploring my feelings of war, of conflict.

Inshallah

“Inshallah” (“God willing” in Arabic) is a project that explores the Soviet and American occupations of Afghanistan and draws on my childhood fantasies that romanticize the military and intertwine with my past and present personal conflicts. In this project, I created a dark fairy tale filled with my fears and dreams, based on my fascination with the army’s strength and order, set on the front lines of what has become America’s longest running war in history. Mesmerized by the complexity of the Afghan chaos, I strive to better comprehend my personal relationship to these wars: two empires, two mentalities, same battlefield, twelve years apart.”

About Dima

Dima received his Master of Fine Arts degree with honors from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2012.

He obtained his first degree in Kiev, Ukraine in 2000 as a Director of Photography in Motion Picture Imaging.

For the past 12 years Dima has worked as a documentary photographer with major publications and news agencies such as Associated Press, Bloomberg News and Agence France-Presse. He has also worked on multiple projects around the globe, including collaborations with Doctors Without Borders and the United Nations Population Fund and numerous recent embeds with the US Army in Afghanistan. Dima’s work has appeared in a variety of international publications, including New York Times, Stern, Paris Match and Time.

Over the past two years Dima has been exploring the American war in Afghanistan through video installation, photography, appropriated imagery and data visualization.

Currently, Dima is working on publishing his first book.

To see more of Dima’s work, please log onto his website.