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Ukraine, 2022 - Ongoing
"In the Shadow of a Deadly Sky" follows Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine as more than a war for territory - it is also a struggle over memory, identity and a people’s right to exist on their own terms. Since 2022, drones, artillery and aerial bombs have made daily survival in the country's eastern regions a matter of timing. The people in these photographs stayed for different reasons: because these towns were the only homes they knew, because pensions still arrived, because relatives could not leave, or because they continued to wait for a Russia - or a Soviet Union — that no longer existed. Whatever they believed, the war did not spare them The attempt to erase Ukrainian identity began long before the present invasion and before 2014. In 1926, the Ukrainian writer Oleksa Slisarenko asked Maxim Gorky for permission to translate his novel "Mother" into Ukrainian. Gorky refused, calling Ukrainian a dialect and the translation unnecessary. Almost a century later, a beheaded statue of Gorky stood in a small town of the Donetsk region, a town later occupied by Russian forces. Across these places, the machinery of war becomes part of everyday life. Anti-drone netting hangs above village roads, Frankenstein tanks, to deflect a drone explosions, speed along the roads. Civilian and military organisations recover the dead. Prisoners of war detained in makeshift cells. In Chasiv Yar, Ludmylla holds a photograph of her son in Red Army uniform, carrying one history into another. In Hroza, a Russian strike hit a café during the funeral vigil of Ukrainian soldier Andriy Kozyr on October 5, 2023, killing fifty-nine civilians who had gathered to bury him. Many of these photographs were made in places later occupied or overtaken by the advancing front, including Vuhledar, Chasiv Yar, Siversk and Pokrovsk. The creation of this body of work was possible thanks to the help of local producers Alexey, Dmytro and Kirill and with the support of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine. The Alexia Grant - Award of Excellence World Report Award SBS Italian - Intervista Walkley Award The Walkley Awards - Photo Essay Category Walkley Awards - The Guardian Indian Photo Festival Ms. Magazine |
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