Photographing Ukraine

‘Ukraine: A War Crime’ and ‘Ukraine: Love and War’ are two photo books that tell the story of over 1,000 days at war. Published in Transitions, 2024.

Published Article

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In a world defined by war, overrun by violence and cruelty, how is it that we still find love and friendship? 

For Ukrainians, this world of war is never far from reach. For more than 1,000 days since Russia’s full-scale invasion, the nation has endured relentless, indiscriminate violence – days marked by bitterness and stained by bloodshed. Yet, amid the horror and atrocities, and against the constants of grief and fear, there remain moments of laughter and sincerity. Against all odds there are reminders of the life that once was and the dreams of a life that might be again. 

Ukraine: A War Crime and Ukraine: Love and War are two photo books that bring together the unexpected remnants of war – both the beauty that endures and the hell that unfolds. With photographs from over 150 photojournalists, professionals and amateurs alike, these books tell not just a story of grief and suffering, but also of sacrifice and resilience. In an introduction to Ukraine: Love and War, Ukrainian writer and war reporter Myroslav Laiuk writes, “although war is synonymous with hatred, paradoxically, it reveals an abundance of love, something worth showcasing. Ultimately, one day’s love will save us all.” Published by FotoEvidence, a non-profit dedicated to documentary photography exploring human rights and social justice, these photographs transcend mere documentation. Here readers behold the visual testimonies of Russia’s unforgiving crimes against Ukraine– images of residential buildings reduced to rubble, and hastily dug graves filled with the bodies of civilians. Some of these images are unrelenting, though, others are filled with a love that outweighs such adversity. Far from passive records, these photographs reveal uncomfortable yet undeniable truths– a truth that bears witness to the harrowing yet sometimes beautiful realities of the war in Ukraine. 

Ukraine: A War Crime

Published in 2023, with over 360 photographs and personal essays in both English and Ukrainian, Ukraine: A War Crime, the publisher writes, “will serve as a powerful tool for mobilization, legal prosecution, and as an historical document for future generations.” The images of are atrocious, often incomprehensible. They depict scenes of deliberate murder and suicide, bodies abandoned on the streets to rot, mothers grieving over the death of an infant. As photojournalist Nicole Tung remarks in the opening pages, “in these images are the testimonies of the living and the dead, who speak in equal terms of all that has been endured.” 

The images are presented in several sections each offering a different perspective on the war. The displacement and emotional farewells of millions of civilians forced to evacuate. The resilience of those who stayed behind. Life on the front lines. The relentless barrage of tanks and missiles. The harrowing stories of cities like Mariupol and Bucha under siege. Yet, as these photos bring out, while war devastates, it does not define. Amid the harrowing scenes in this collection, moments of humanity still emerge: glimpses of joy as soldiers play checkers with Molotov cocktails, tributes of honor as people commemorate their fallen heroes, and symbols of unwavering resilience in the embrace of the only two soldiers to survive an ambush.

Ukraine: A War Crime concludes with an homage to Ukrainian photographer Maks Levin who tragically lost his life while on assignment in 2022. As one tribute in the book poignantly states, Levin like so many others “had been trying to shoot the very shot that would stop this damned war. Maks made hundreds of them.” 

Ukraine: Love and War

Published in 2024, Ukraine: Love and War goes beyond the immediate language of war – those images that verge on historical iconography and universally recognized symbols of death, destruction, and despair. Instead, this book highlights the often overlooked moments of humanity amid war – the parents starting a family while serving on the front lines, the children roller-skating through desolate parking lots, the mother still finding the time to braid her daughter’s hair in the midst of an evacuation. The simplest response to war is to let it consume and define you, to succumb entirely to its defining qualities. But in Ukraine, the story is different. As photographer Carol Guzy observes in her documentary photo essay, “Ukrainian Love Story,” “to live with joy and hope has become a weapon against war.”

As a sister volume, Ukraine: Love and War shares many similarities to Ukraine: A War Crime. It too is divided into thematic sections. Here, we witness a unique duality of love and war, aptly captured in the introductions title: “Proof of Love in Times of Hatred”. There are moments of both peaceful and violent revolution, the rise of one generation and the passing of another, lives abruptly interrupted yet also adapted and embraced. These polarities do not detract from the book’s value as an accessible and comprehensible visual history. Rather than focusing exclusively on the current conflict, this photobook traces the nation’s ongoing struggle for freedom, beginning with its declaration of independence in 1991, through the Maidan revolution in 2014 and the Russian-backed war in the Donbas to the invasion of 2022. While the introduction places these events in historical context, the images themselves, as Myroslav Laiuk remarks in the opening sentence, “[don’t] just capture, confirm, or preserve memories; [they] create.” “Photography creates an event.” 

In Ukraine, the camera is not just a neutral observer, but rather an active participant. The images compiled in Ukraine: A War Crime and Ukraine: Love and War push us to confront these unsettling truths – to witness the man who weeps over his family, the homes bombed to rubble, and the bodies left to freeze in an unforgiving winter. Concluding the introduction to Ukraine: A War Crime, journalist and soldier Volodymyr Demchenko urges, “I hope you are one of those brave readers who is going to be a witness, who will not allow these dark deeds to dissolve into oblivion.” Though we may be reluctant to engage, it is precisely these images that we must confront, for the act of understanding – or any hope for change – begins with the act of seeing. In all of wars gruesome complexity, there are moments of beauty and virtue, where nothing and no one is forgotten: the life of every pet held as equally as significant as their owners, and Russian POWs seen as deserving of basic human rights and the right to have their story told. In Ukraine: A War Crime and Ukraine: Love and War, no story is spared, for each one bears a truth to the telling of this war.