Born in Minsk (Belarus) Soviet Union in 1962. Studied cibernetics and automatic control systems at the Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics from 1980. In 1985 he graduated with the  University Degree of an Electrical Engineer. Since 1985 he worked as an engineer in Minsk until 1991. In 1980 he had his first practice of scuba diving at Minsk School of Voluntary Society to Support Army, Air Forces and Navy with instructor Valery Burtsev (he resumed scuba diving  at Sea Pegas Diving Club, in Minsk, with instructor Andrey Likhachyov, PADI, 2003 and took further technical courses in 2004 with Sergey Borisov, TDI, Hurghada, Egypt in 2004). Started working with photography in 1989 when he got engaged with Valery Lobko's Creative Photography Studio. In 1990 Savchenko received a Prize by Kodak-Pathe Foundation at Salon International de la Recherche Photographique, Royan, France, 1990.

First solo exhibition: Galleri Index/ Fotograficentrum, Stockholm. In the period of 1994-1995 he stareted writing texts and prose. In 1997 he declared an abandonment from creation of new photographic works and started various textual and mixed media projects, 1998-2005. Certified as Adv Tx TDI multigas mixtures diver with instructor Andrey Chistyakov; Trimix Deep Diving master-class at Chistyakov and diving with him to the depth of 192 meters, The Blue Hole, Dahab, South Sinai, Egypt, 2005.Resumed taking pictures in autumn of 2006.

Lives and works in Minsk, Belarus.

Igor Savchenko Collections

• Belarussian State Museum of History of the Great Patriotic War, Minsk
• Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen
• Fotografiska Museet - Moderna Museet, Stockholm
• Fotomuseum München, Munich, Germany
• Fotomuseum Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland
• The Hasselblad Collection, Gothenburg, Sweden
• KIASMA - Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki
• Museet for Fotokunst Brandts, Odense, Denmark
• Museum of Contemporary Art, Minsk
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, USA
• The National Museum of History and Culture of Belarus, Minsk
• The Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection, The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA
• The State Russian Museum, St.Petersburg, Russia

ON THE ALTERED BEHAVIOUR OF SUNLIGHT
We no longer have
A constant flow of sunlight.
Light appears to us
As a sequence of transient storms.
Everything around us is lit up for brief instants.
The world picture shimmers.
But moments of light and darkness
Still alternate too fast,
For us to notice them.
We still believe
The visible picture is steady.
In fact the storms of sunlight
Blow past more rarely and less regularly.
Darkness has been gathering.
Uncertainty keeps growing.
The visual picture
Is gradually being replaced
By its speculative model.
But this we can only guess at
From indirect signs -
Inexplicable and sudden failures
While photographing the moments which
Miss just another sunlight storm.
We ourselves fail to notice that
Our perception of the world is changing.
We ourselves are changing.
The consequences are not yet clear.

Igor Savchenko
Minsk, February 1996

Russian-English translation: Mark Bence, the author, 1996