Patrick Bienert is a German photographer currently living and working in Paris, France. 

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The photographs were made across Ukraine between  2015 and 2020 in the spring and summer seasons. The images form a collective portrait of being young in Ukraine. They were taken on the way to the sea, along the banks of the Dnipro River to beaches of the Black Sea; and further onwards on the Arabat Spit, to a mineral hot spring in a small village close to the Sea of Azov called 

Shchaslyvtseve, which means Happy in Ukrainian.

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Patrick Bienert is a German photographer, who works on long-term projects of portrait, landscape and documentary photography. He studied photography at the Staatliche Lehranstalt für Fotografie in Munich. His photographic longterm projects are grounded on cultures and identity in relation to the history and its traces between the land and its inhabitants. He predominantly documents youth culture and transformation on the borders of Eastern Europe. Bienert has published the books Wake up Nights (2017), about the young nightlife culture in Ukraine. East End of Europe (2020) about a pro-European generation in Georgia. His third book Happy Springs (2023), forms a collective portrait of being young in Ukraine. Photographed along the banks of the Dnipro River and the beaches of the Black Sea. His work has been exhibited In Paris, Tbilisi, London, Tunis, Athens, Rovinj, Munich and Berlin. Editorial projects have been have been published in The New York Times Magazine, Double Magazine, Luncheon Magazine, Document Journal, The Atlantic and Zeit Magazin.

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