Ukraine : de Maïdan au Donbass

From Maïdan to Donbass" recounts the events that shook Ukraine from the end of 2013 to May 2014. Over the course of six months, Guillaume Herbaut made ten trips for various French newspapers, from Paris Match to Figaro magazine, including Le Monde, Télérama and Libération. However, his first trip was not motivated by a commission but by the necessity to go to Kiev to follow the demonstrations in Maïdan, the main square of the Ukrainian capital: "I feel linked to Ukraine. Most of the places I have photographed this year I have known in other circumstances in the past. It all started with Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych's rejection of an association agreement with the European Union on 29 November 2013. In December, the movement, which was pacifist, was limited to Maïdan Square and included political and social demands. In February, the Ukrainian president was deposed by parliament, and the conflict spread to the east of the country to the Donbass region, which declared itself independent in May.

If Guillaume Herbaut left for Ukraine so quickly, it was also driven by his instinct. He has known the country well since 2001, when he went there for the first time to produce his personal series Chernobylsty, about Chernobyl fifteen years after the nuclear disaster. Since then, he has returned regularly, at least once a year, either "called" by events that have marked this country, such as the Orange Revolution in 2004, or stimulated by personal projects, notably The Zone, which came out in 2011 in the form of a book, a web-documentary and a blog."

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