Portrait: Honorable Mention 2025 (professional)
I choose life. by Michael Dorohovich (Ukraine)
ENTRY DESCRIPTION
This image is a woman’s candid dialogue with the world.
She is bare, yet never powerless. Her body bears the scars of struggle, while her eyes shine with unbroken faith.
It is a story where pain becomes art.
Where loss turns into a reminder of life.
Where beauty is born even in places that seem consumed by darkness.
This portrait speaks not only of one soul,
but of every woman who dares to declare:
“I choose life – against all odds.”
AUTHOR
Michael Dorohovich is a portrait and documentary photographer, born in 1978 in Transcarpathia, in the small town of Uzhgorod.
Winner of the MONOVISIONS Black & White Photography Awards 2023 (single) award. He holds a master's degree in photography from the Kyiv University of Culture and is a teacher of audiovisual art at the Uzhgorod Academy of Culture and Arts.
Winner and prize-winner of many prestigious world awards in the field of photography. His works have received international recognition and have been exhibited in museums and galleries in Japan, India, North America and many European countries.
Author of photo projects that presented the culture and traditions of Transcarpathia to the whole world: “Famous and Interesting Personalities of Transcarpathia” (2021 - 2022); "Cultural Ethnos of Transcarpathia" (2022); "High-mountain inhabitants of the Ukrainian Carpathians" (2023-2024); "Unique women of the Roma culture Keldelari" (2023-2025).
Throughout his life, he has been engaged in solo mountaineering and mountain solo trekking. He traveled through the mountain systems of the Carpathians, Crimea, Caucasus, Alps, Altai, Kamchatka, Pamir and Tien Shan. He recorded all his ascents in photo landscapes.
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