Descended from an ancient Ukrainian Cossack lineage, Melnikoff was a dissident and political prisoner during the Soviet era. At great personal risk, he escaped the USSR together with his wife and young daughter. Following his escape, Sergey Melnikoff was granted political asylum and placed under the protection of a special United Nations resolution in connection with his exposure of medical experiments conducted on prisoners in the Soviet forced-labour camp Butugychag in the Magadan region during the Stalinist period.

Today he is a distinguished American artist and an innovator of revolutionary photographic techniques.

Melnikoff is the only photographer in history whose works have been accepted as personal gifts by world leaders, including U.S. President George Bush, Queen Elizabeth II, Pope Francis, King Birendra of Nepal, Catholicos-Patriarch Ilia II of All Georgia, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Pope Benedict XVI, Ukrainian Patriarch Filaret, and many others.

His public artistic image is embodied by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

The artist has worked in 150 countries across all continents and is regarded as one of the ten most influential figures in contemporary art. In cinema, he established himself as director of the films The Hour of Adventure, Treasure Hunters, and There Is No Place in the World of Wild Animals. He spent more than ten years in the Himalayas and Tibet, repeatedly filming on Mount Everest, and devoted many years to underwater cinematography in seas across the globe.

In 2020, at his initiative and within the framework of his own promotional project, President Emomali Rahmon of Tajikistan renamed the second-highest peak of the Pamirs: formerly known by its Soviet name, Peak Korzhenevskaya, it was given the name Peak Ozodi (“Freedom”).

Melnikoff is also the author of Genius, the world’s first portrait of a living person created by artificial intelligence, depicting Academician Borys Paton.

In 2014, together with the legendary Borys Paton, he founded the International Charitable Foundation “Soul of Ukraine”.

During the first year of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Sergey Melnikoff opened a creative studio in Odesa, where his art experienced a profound rebirth. Transforming fragments of lethal metal into images of memory and hope, he creates sculptures from the “ashes of war” that have become symbols of resilience and have been recognised internationally as masterpieces of contemporary art.

A National Hero of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Sergey Melnikoff is a full кавalier of all degrees of the Ukrainian Order of Saint Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Volodymyr the Great and a recipient of numerous international distinctions, including the departmental medal “For Cooperation” of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, awarded to him in 2025.

His honours and achievements affirm his place among the most decorated and influential artists of our time.

Thousands of roads across a million kilometres. Two and a half years above the clouds in aircraft seats. Twenty years of life in a tent beneath the stars. Twenty-five years in the silence of the underwater world. One hundred and fifty-three countries. Every continent on Earth. The whole world as an open book. Such are the extraordinary pages in the life of an American artist with a Cossack heart.