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Documenting Dissent

Review by Howard Davis
From time to time, a young photographer emerges whose choice of content and subject matter distinguishes their work from the plethora of amateur iPhone, Photoshop, and Instagram apps.

This is indisputably the case in the striking and dramatic photographs of Olex Sydor, currently on show at Wellington's Photospace Gallery until the second week of February. The exhibition - 'On to the Streets: two years of street protests and marches in Wellington' - provides graphic evidence that the public voice of dissent is not only still struggling to be heard, but also alive and kicking back hard.

Sydor initially started studying photography at university in 2008 because the course he enrolled in didn't have an exam at the end of it. In 2011 he began working semi-professionally as a photographer in Wellington's music scene and published his first story through the photo agency Demotix in 2013. Since then, he's published over seventy stories and his photos have been purchased by news publications around the world, including 'The Guardian.'

At a time when political activism is increasingly fragmented and atomized, Sydor's photographs are based firmly in the camp of Social Realism, committed to documenting the ongoing struggle of politically-engaged citizens simply to be heard. They focus on individual faces distorted with passionate outrage and frustration - confrontational and challenging depictions of marginalized and disenfranchised voices speaking truth to power.

Sydor's work bears important witness to the combined efforts of concerned individuals whose sense of outrage has brought them together under a common umbrella of protest and dissent. His photographs provide a topical and timely reminder that the collective expression of defiance remains a powerful tool of social change. In these tepid days of timid Neo-Liberal anxiety and social conformism, they express a necessary and salutary call for direct action against social injustice, and deserve a wide audience.

On to the Street: Two years of street protests and marches in Wellington is on at Photospace Gallery, 22nd January-13th February 2016.

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