Svet Goldmeier
Svet Jacqueline was first introduced to photography, shooting film, and developing in a darkroom in high school. She fell in love with the power of storytelling and learned from the candid moments captured by Mary Ellen Mark, Margaret Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange, and Sally Mann. She went on to study photojournalism and psychology in college, graduating from Syracuse University in 2014. During her sophomore year, she was mentored by Bruce Weber as part of the HBO documentary series, Masterclass.
During the global pandemic, she shifted her focus from the music industry to the racial and economic injustices in California and across the United States. She began covering the California wildfires, poverty on Skid Row, and the Black Lives Matter movement. In 2021, she published her first book of work, “100 Days of Protest.” Svet continued to push deeper into the national and international issues surrounding the United States. This led her to the U.S.-Mexico border. She spent six months based in Mexico and Texas learning Spanish and documenting families seeking asylum. Her work placed first in the International Photography Awards and Best of Photojournalism.
With a better understanding of migration, Svet felt compelled to explore her own story of displacement and the past she had left in Eastern Europe. On February 24, 2022, Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. She was thrown into the breaking news of covering war, drawn instinctively to the humanitarian moments that seemed most undeserved- filing her first assignments as a photojournalist. Three years later, Svet is fully based in Ukraine, freelancing for the Wall Street Journal and working on long-term stories about childhood, cultural identity, and the aftermath of an ongoing war. She has published photo essays in two books, multiple magazines, and is currently working with Leica Camera, USA.
2024 Solo Exhibition Leica: Moments When The Smoke Clears
2024 American Center For Photographers Exhibition
2023 Ukraine: A War Crime, FotoEvidence Book
2023 ZEKE Magazine: “Too Young To Fight”
2023 Orlando Museum Of Art Exhibit: Relentless Courage
2022 Photo Book: Relentless Courage: Ukraine And The World At War
2022 CNN Women And Nonbinary Photographers Capture 2022