new -- color & b&w 'The OTHER Fight at Ukraine's Famous Maidan'

Ukrainian protesters now living in tents above this scene drove out

Ukraine's elected president on claims he was obscenely corrupt, then he

fled and resigned (later claimed he did not resign), but nevertheless

'invited' President Putin of Russia to invade Crimea, which Putin did, then

claimed he regretted that. This scene is in the famous Maidan Metro

station deep below famous Freedom Square, one of Kyiv, Ukraine's most

central and important Metro stations, a connecting hub at city center. In

the coach right, a conflict developed which could be heard by all, as the

train, right, approached the station and discharged its passengers, then

the dark-haired man, fists outstretched struck the black man when his

back was turned away,(photos of all) and a fist fight ensued. This was

taken just afterward. Regardless of who 'started it', this scene reflects

an ugly truth about Ukrainian society -- a deeply homogeneous culture,

whose people (like neighboring Russia) who in speaking Russian call

black people 'niggers' as standard language and frequently to their face

call black African embassy workers 'monkeys'. Your ratings, critiques

and observations are invited and most welcome. If you rate harshly, very

critically, or wish to make a remark, please submit a helpful and

constructive comment; please share your photographic knowledge to

help improve my photography. Thanks! Please be informed and enjoy

the photography! john

And far from all of them are racist.  Many of those who are openly racist, have little idea of how offensive their racism is because of the almost complete absence in their country of those of other colors - black people who appear sometimes get not only stared at but sometimes openly pointed at with astonished citizens remarking on their color.

This is not all Ukrainians, and it is not an indictment of some of the world's most wonderful people, but for open culture among the races, Ukraine scores very low, as does neighboring Russia, where skinheads routinely were known to attack black residents, even and sometimes especially black African scholars at Moscow's famous Patrice Lumumba University, a Soviet-started institution that was hoped by Soviet Communists to be the breeding ground to spread Soviet Communism to the African continent.

 Until 1991, Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, and a good part of Ukraine speaks Russian; others speak Ukrainian.

Many citizens are informed and are simply not racists, others are proud of their racism as well as their Antisemitism.

This photo is only one moment of conflict in what is almost always a peaceful nation, an extremely peaceful and conflict free Metro, and is astonishing that it happened at all, because the Metro is a place of safety for all Ukrainians, and virtually crime and conflict free.

Such happenings are literally unheard of; there are literally no muggings to speak of; to vandalize a seat or spraypaint or marker a carriage wall is unthinkable; Ukrainians deeply love and respect their Metro, and it is a wonderful and delightful carriage.

Moreover, I was not on the carriage where this happening began, so I have no idea what 'started' this occurrence, though I have a photo of the black man leaving,  back to the crowd, then the start of a fist fight.  (I could not see anything due to the crowd and shot overhead.

Shot on the day of Ukraine's 'rebirth' with the election of a new, pro-Western president, affectionately dubbed 'the Chocolate King' -- a confectionery oligarch whose cakes and sweets are absolutely delicious by any standard.

john

John (Crosley)

'When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way, from your first cigarette, to your last dying day.'

The 'Jet Song' from 'West Side Story' (hit and long-running Broadway Play/Musical and feature musical film).

Written by Leonard Bernstein.

'West Side Story is an urban ballet/opera of NYC gang life, not realized by many of its huge audience  as a modern 'opera' just as the musical 'Oklahoma' with its western dancing and ho-downs, was also not realized by many to be a a modern 'ballet'.

Clever packaging sneaks stuff past audiences, so long as things are not called what they really are sometimes, when those things are seen in 'disfavor' and might drive away audiences if acknowledged for what they truly are.

john

John (Crosley)

Ukrainians are bigoted people (not all of them).  Jews and Blacks are not so safe on the street in Ukraine. Black soccer players (on the news) coming in from other countries to play are sometimes attacked on the street. 

Israelis are warned about traveling to the Ukraine. If you go to Ukraine don't look Jewish.

Maybe here is African immigrant and that is what the fight is about....since you did not see what happened.

Good documentary photograph.

Just another example of the consequences of democracy imported by non fitting importer! The exporter must be very satisfied for divide et impera is the name of the game!

Best regards

PDE

Thanks for the compliment; this is one of my best works.

No matter how raters feel; I know for me what's good and rare and what's not.  This one is riveting and tells a story.  I showed it to some people on the street, and no one could take their eyes off of it, and all wanted to know what it was all about.

Whether you like or hate a photo, when a photo generates that much interest, it's a successful photo.

I don't know if Jews are in danger in Ukraine or not, except the Right Sector and followers of Stepan Bandera are avowedly antiSemitic, and the US recently sent a special envoy to (among other countries) for antiSemitism to Ukraine, especially since they're sending billions of dollars to prop up the economy that Putin is pushing over the brink and is failing from internal problems besides.

I have spent considerable time in Dnipropetrovsk ,and one companion on a long train ride was a young Jewish man, a courier for Jewish businessmen in Dnipropetrovsk (I cautioned him about telling even apparently trustworthy me that fact), and we talked about status of Jews and Jewry in Dnipropetrovsk, which has Ukraine's largest and most prosperous Jewish population.  

I like to visit with Jews in Ukraine in part because I can be assured they'll almost all speak good English and have good education - at least the ones I encounter, which means a lively, informed, intelligent conversation.  I like that.  Sometimes we get glances askance when we're talking, but that's the others' problem.

I photograph the Orthodox sometimes at the Kyiv airport when they arrive, too, often looking to 'worship' a long ago deceased rabbi, or to find a blue-eyed Jewish bride. (true, it's been told me many times, and Ukraine has such).

With black hats, black suits and curls, they're looked at like other world creatures, and sometimes they're very immature, despite their very mature dress - it's anomalous, these serious looking men, some of whom act like little boys, who often are the ages of grown men -- they're just plain silly and/or naive some of them -- remarkably so, and surprisingly so.

(not all, though, of course).

I was once on a hillltop in the middle of Ukraine on a highway in mid-winter at night, stopped during taking a very long jitney bus ride from Dnipropetrovsk to Odessa. The drivers knew and liked me because I made the run several times , my cameras made me prominent, and 'I"m likeable', at least a little, or so they felt.

They had called ahead on their mobile phones to the opposing drivers coming the other way from Odessa to Dnipropetrovsk who also wanted to see and meet briefly with me, so we waited in the snow under the bright, cold Milky Way, making patterns and figures in the white snow with our yellow pee.

I had not been informed of the surprise meeting planned and was wondering 'what are we doing here - is this a setup?' distrustingly all of a sudden.

One driver, overcome by the middle of the night beauty and starkness of the cold said 'I love my wife, I love my children, I love life, I love my friends, I love John, I love Ukraine, I love everything.'

'Except the yids'

Did he know a yid, I asked hiim?

'Are you a rid?' he asked back.

No, but many Americans are Jewish, I replied, and I went to a school/university where one-third of the students were Jewish and one very important women in my life (I didn't then know about my divorced wife) was Jewish, nor did my divorced wife at that point.  Later she found she was Jewish by birth, remarried Jewish and later had three Jewish children.  I'm comfortable with that, and happy for her.

Oh, why do you exclude the 'yids' I asked?

'Are you a yid?' the man asked me again.

No, but they're humans with feelings, and they love their children just like you do.  Their children play and giggle and get sick and do children things, then get older and grow up.

'No,' I said, but I know and like many Jews.

I was suspect from then on.

It's kind of like when in the '50s, if you said something in the US in favor of black rights or black people, your were called a 'nigger lover'.

I still was tolerated, but there never was another such celebration.

No surprise mountain top meetings with opposing drivers, no special moments 'just for me' because I was the passenger held in such high esteem, perhaps because I was thought a 'Jew Lover'.

I suppose I was a 'Jew lover' in their minds.

Yet, when I asked, not one of them knew a Jewish person, or even knew what a Jew was.  Only that they hated Jews.

They learned it as part of growing up; it was a Ukrainian universal truth.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it, because it's a true moment to share with you, Meir.  

A tiny slice of my life.

john

John (Crosley)

I photographed what I could hear but could not see; strap taut around my neck, camera held at the length of the strap overhead.

I don't think I could have done better.

Thanks for the compliment.

This a capture I won't forget.

Unseen but captured nevertheless, and among my best ever.

Thanks again.

Best wishes.

john

John (Crosley)

John,

for a "blind" shot this is amazingly well done- composition, light etc but also the capture of the expressions and the heat of the moment. It certainly tells a story, although a sad one , as do you, and very well said! yes, you have to be taught to hate. And it is so much easier if you are not faced with the reality of what you are supposed to hate. what are you doing in Ukraine?

I've been 'documenting' life in Ukraine, off and on, alternating with 'life in America' and other places, for ten years, almost since the time I took up photography seriously again after years of hiatus.

I first used this camera overhead in a crowd technique on Powell Street, San Francisco, when Richard Nixon was in front of me, surrounded by Pat Nixon, throngs of well wishers, and Secret Service, and I had a Nikon and a $28 (cheap) Soligor 28 mm fixed focal length, no auto stop down, wide angle lens with Tri-X 'film' when 'film was basically the only medium, aside from Daguerrotype and wet plate collodion. 

The result then was a wonderful capture that gets praise today, and I hadn't a clue where I learned it; I just improvised like the 'big boys' who were from my own wire service (Associated Press) from Washington, D.C. bureau, following Nixon, and I scooped them on front pages worldwide (with another photo).  

The photo I cherish was never printed except on Photo.net and now on Flicker.com

It's an overhead photo showing Nixon reaching around ME, to shake someone's hand who's reaching around my side.  

One photographer in front of Nixon is seen looking at me and smiling/laughing at how I'd nailed the shot (head sideways goofily to avoid shooting my own head's back,  camera held up over my body and behind where my head would be, but my head was so sideways that the lens could not possibly capture my head or head back and left a clear shot of Nixon, Pat Nixon, gloved hands touchingly embracing her husband, Secret Service, and the varied faces of the impromptu and tumultuous crowd -- a crowd in which every face was different.

Nobody taught me how to do it, and I hadn't had to worry about a 'fixed camera strap' tautness technique, I used for stability in the photo above because I was shooting at 1/1000th of a second at f 8 and everything was in focus with my cheap lens with no worries about motion blur.

Astonishing what you could do with a cheap lens in bright sunlight, and the lens bought in Hong Kong with leftover Vietnamese money that was almost worthless after I was medically evacuated from freelancing the war in Viet Nam, and i was evacuated from my medical evacuation plane because I was too ill to travel to Japan or on to the United States, and stayed in Hong Kong to recuperate for two weeks.  

I bought the lens just as I as to depart Hong Kong, with my absolute last money (Oh, by the way, I had traveled half way around the world with no passport, and was returning with 'no passport'.

there I was, 22 years old, a civilian Viet Nam freelance combat vet, using on Nixon a technique I just now used blindly at Maidan, Kyiv, Ukraine, well over 40 years later.

It's second nature.  

It's easier with a Nikon D5000 with the swing view screen, or theother Nikon D5xxx series cameras, but in this case there was no time to use a 'swing screen' or even deploy it to look.  

This was over in a thrice, then the melee moved on, the hubbub died down, and the fight stopped.

I had captured the apex.

.

I shot on pure instinct.

I marveled at now inactive but wonderful Roman shooter, Giuseppe Pasquale who told me in an e-mail he often never looked in his viewfinder when shooting as he 'knew' what he was shooting precisely.

He didn't feel compelled to look always.  

He 'knew'.

Now, I have one to equal him; I knew basically what I was going to cover, if anything at all, but hadn't a clue what would be captured, other than 'something' whatever it was that was causing the hubbub in front of the people blocking my view.

I think this photo makes my arms look pretty long, but I'm average height, and arms are not particularly long.  

The camera strap was not taut from neck to camera in the first one or two frames, so they're blurry, but when I pulled it taut, the rest of the overhead frames are pretty sharp, considering low light. and an ISO 3200 setting, preset.

Adobe camera raw on the NEF and even Adobe Photoshop on the JPEG could not get this as sharp as just the JPEG from the 'in-camera' processed Nikon D3200 capture, as processed on the Metro by me, and tweaked inPhotoshop only a little.

Nikon's in-camera software is not to be overlooked when 'noise' and artifacts are to be tackled, and one does not have appropriate Photoshop plug-ins.  

The Adobe versions I processed came out looking pretty mediocre, even unusable, but I'd put money on this in-camera NEF desaturation!

Best to you, and thanks for the nice praise.

I aim to please.

I sometimes worry over a shot and spend time on it, but frankly any more, not much.

This was fractions of a second, five shots or six, then it was over.

Little more than an instant and a mystery with no solution until I blew up the captures on my computer and studied them including the out-of-focus ones.

And I didn't see my captures until later, as I could not view in the throng, and there was a chance things would start up again, so I tried to follow a little.

There were no police (militia) around; I think they all were mobilized to guard the polling places throughout Ukraine in its historic election for President and mayor of Kyiv locally, which was why I was out -- visiting polling stations with my camera, even 'fighting' for entrance with at least one polling station chief, a bureaucratic idiot who said HE was going to take my pictures with MY CAMERA because it was ILLEGAL for me to take photos of polling.

Does that sound ludicrous?  His 'boss' of regional elections finally gave me a 'license' to photograph polls, after an hour and a half of fighting with this bonehead who wanted to throw me out of a packed polling place.  So much for 'total transparency' vs 'the idiocy of the petty Kafka bureaucrats!

In the end, I prevailed, of course, and got wonderful photos, and I hardly raised my voice, but was VERY PERSISTENT about not being sent away empty handed (e.g, no captures.  I can be very convincing.

Imagine this guy wanted to have me point out what scenes I wanted, then to comply with his boss's order that I could have photos, he was going to take my camera and take MY photos with MY camera --- and he was a polling director!

The whole story is worse than reading a Kafka work; it's so improbable.

Best to the both of you.

I done my best, at the spur of the moment above, (camera ready, no lens cover, ever).

john 

John (Crosley)

This photo is full frame exactly as captured with no straightening, no cropping and original, if blind, composition.  Lens, zoom wide angle at 12 mm.

john

John (Crosley)

Here is further explanation from what I heard and first frames.

I heard commotion from other coach (pictured), got off mine.

The commotion continued.

A blurry frame shows the black man, back to the coach, exiting, not fighting with anybody.

Further, shows the black haired man, fists cocked here, in a fist fight with the black man.

A later frame shows the black man as here, fist cocked, confronted by various white arms.

The next frame shows all these same arms cocked but the black man with arms and fists down.

(The crowd then moved, and the photographic record stops, the commotion stops, but there definitely was a fist fight between the white man and the black man, started clearly - at its latest point for sure - by the dark-haired white man, fists cocked here, based solely on the photographic record including somewhat blurry first photos but which are plenty clear to make out what's happening -- just not good enough to post as 'art').

john

John (Crosley)

My friend of six or seven years said to me in explanation 'Ukrainians call these people 'niggers' and 'monkeys'.

Everybody almost does it.

I'm white, and I'm not present during such conversations, so I have not experienced such expressions of discrimination.

I am an acquaintance of a black worker at an African embassy who complained to me recently about being called by Ukrainians a 'monkey', on account of her fairly dark color and African origins. She's beautiful -- and has almost Western features, being from East Africa where the so-called 'black Africans' tend to look more Middle Eastern with more Anglo looking features than the features one associate with darkest Africa.  She's also lighter skin.  Blackest Africans, however, can be beautiful also, however, but not in traditional Ukrainian eyes, apparently.

Being white, and not being exposed to this until this time, my knowledge heretofore was largely academic.  Now it's first hand.

Enough said.

john 

John (Crosley)

This is a very strained scene! But such scenes are very rare now - I've never seen such an attitude toward people with different skin color.

A Moscow resident (Muscovite) friend of mine of long standing has seen this photo, has been with me in Kyiv as well as lived a long time in Moscow and said to me:

"This photo might as easily have been taken in Moscow as Kyiv'.

The Soviets built the Metros almost exactly alike in both cities.

Even the trains came out of the same factories but with different paint.  Some stations are almost identical.

In Moscow now there surely are newer trains, but same in Kyiv on some lines and even on some trains on this line also built in Russia and I am certain identical to Moscow trains.

My Russian friend, whom I would trust with my life, added a new wrinkle.

Maybe he stole something.

In 1964, that same thought occurred to many white people when there was a disturbance and a black person was involved; not so much today.

It was almost the first thought from my Russian friend's mind (almost but not quite).

I see it through quite different eyes; I never considered that as a part of this photo and still don't (no one called police, and no one is looking for police in photo or seen 'calling out' or looking about as though looking for cops.)

Funny how eyes can differ.

john 

John (Crosley)

In ten years of going in and out of Ukraine, I never have seen such a disturbance on the Kyir Metro, ever.  Especially of such magnitude.

Moreover, I never have observed a 'racial incident' as I believe this is.

But I am informed that Ukraine is a place where blacks from abroad are told to 'be careful'.

I would have bet this was 'impossible' before I took this photo.

I am proved wrong.

Thanks for a helpful and confirming comment.

(I also can confirm this is not NORMAL behavior of Ukrainians, no matter how coarse or anti-anything some of them talk).

I have found Ukrainians to be among the most peaceful and peaceable people I have ever been among, especially considering they are far from a wealthy country and do not have great personal wealth, except for a few, and on the streets, generally there is great respect; and the few black people I know (other than being treated to some choice language) do not complain of racial violence, not even in hand-me-down stories.

I'm very heartened by your comment, Svetlana, in part because it allows me to keep the record straight.  This is NOT representative of Ukraine, but is one awful moment.  I had previously not thought this possible and am badly chastened and disappointed.

But the photo tells as true a story as I can possibly tell.

I very much appreciate your comment, coming as it does from an ace Kyiv photographer of much experience living in the city, with great experience observing, reporting honestly, as well as photographing.

john

John (Crosley)

In Israel: Chinese Jews look chinese, Jews from India look Indian, from Ethiopia are black, from Iraq like Arabs from Europe white and we are all the same...Jews.

Well said.

john

John (Crosley)