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"My Journey Through Life: Adolescence" Part 3

Added 2025-03-21 15:00:16 +0000 UTC

Between the ages of 16 and 18, I kept experimenting with my style, vision, and editing techniques. Naturally, my teenage years left their mark—and as you can see, some of the photos from that time are pretty dark 😅.

I kept learning from different photographers, retouchers, and photo schools, and my mind turned into a total creative mess. I wanted to apply everything I had learned all at once—and honestly, you can totally see that in the photos 🤣.

But back then, even those kinds of photos were considered trendy and “super innovative” 🤪.

One of the photo schools I studied at invited me to exhibit my work with them in Dnipro, and of course, I was thrilled! I only had to pay for the printing of my photos.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos left from that time. When I was 18, I lost my phone—or rather, I think it was stolen—and back then, nobody really used cloud backups 😅. Half of my life disappeared with that phone. To this day, I still feel sad about how many important memories and events were lost. I don’t even have any pictures from my high school graduation, only a few that someone else took. None of mine survived.

But I’ll try to describe what it looked like 🙂

The exhibition took place in Dnipro, outdoors in the courtyard of the photo school. At the time, it all looked super creative—they had strung ropes across the courtyard, and used cute little clothespins to hang up photographers’ work.

I think I was the youngest participant there—but don’t quote me on that ))

I remember this one moment so clearly: we arrived at the exhibition, there were a lot of people walking around, and it was so fun and exciting to see them stopping and looking at my works.

And then—I noticed that one of my photos was hanging the wrong way. (You’ll see this photo in the carousel—it’s the one where Andrew is hanging upside-down from a fence.) I had intentionally hung it that way. For some reason, I’ve always loved flipping photos upside-down—I don’t even know why 😅.

But the girl assisting with the exhibition had re-hung it “the right way”—so that Andrew was hanging downward, not upward. I came over and flipped it back to the way I had originally hung it. A little later, I walked by again—and it was flipped wrong again! This happened three times 😅

The third time I was adjusting it, the assistant came over and told me I wasn’t allowed to touch or reposition the photos. I explained, “I’m the author of this work, and it’s supposed to be displayed this way.” 😅

After a bit of back-and-forth, she gave up, and I happily hung the photo the way I thought it looked most interesting and unusual (YES, I JUST FLIPPED THE PHOTO UPSIDE-DOWN 🤣)

I don’t know why this memory stands out so clearly, but I remember it like it was yesterday—even though it was 12 or 13 years ago.

So… what do you think of my "masterpieces" from that time? 🤣