On February 24, 2022, Russian forces invaded Ukraine, starting the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II. The fighting has led to hundreds of thousands of soldiers killed on the battlefields, tens of thousands of civilian deaths, and has resulted in 3.7 internally displaced people in the country and 6.5 million refugees, according to UNHCR’s numbers as of February of 2024.
“It would be misleading to suggest that we’ve seen any improvement in the war situation. In reality, the conflict has only worsened,” says photojournalist Diego Ibarra Sánchez. “Thousands of civilians remain trapped in the crossfire, hundreds of schools lie in ruins, and there is no end in sight to this nightmare. Ukraine is confronting the tragedy of a lost generation, with its future being erased by war. In war, there are no winners—only victims, and the scars will endure for decades to come.”
Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine did not start in 2022. It actually began in 2014, a decade ago. It started with the Ukrainian Revolution, when after clashes between government forces and protestors forced the ousting of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, an ally of Russia. In response, pro-Russian separatists began fighting Ukrainian forces in the Donbas region of the country along the border of the two countries. Russia, using the power vacuum left from the revolution, occupied and then annexed Crimea while also backing the separatists’ movement.
In 2023, the FotoEvidence Book Award was used to publish Ukraine: A War Crime. The book looked at the war in the country since the Russian invasion in 2022. Using both photographs and text from the photographers themselves, it is a critical look at the situation on the ground in Ukraine.
This year, FotoEvidence is again turning to look at Ukraine with the 2024 book award Ukraine: Love+War. Containing 440 photographs and writings from more than 90 Ukrainian and international photojournalists from 23 countries, this book expands on the first and documents the impact of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine since 2014. It focuses on daily life and the disruption, displacement, destruction, and death visited on innocent Ukrainian civilians.
The photographs in the book tell the story of Ukraine from 2014 through the present day, which gives context to the current situation. But they do not just show the fighting, the death, and the blood spilled in the conflict. They also explore the lives of those caught in the conflict: the civilians for whom daily life goes on surrounded by war. War does not stop the daily activities of civilians, but rather they are forced to change to what becomes a new normal under unbelievably harsh conditions and uncertainty.
“My initial challenge as the photo editor was how do we not repeat ourselves in this second book. The destruction, the fighting, the fears and the outcomes remain essentially the same. So we thought of trying to answer the question, ‘How do you live a life against the backdrop of war?’ That gave us a path forward,” tells Sarah Leen, the book’s Photo Editor. “But I was still struggling with structure for the images that would tell a story and engage the viewers. Then I had one of those in the shower moments when an idea just bursts into your head. The words ‘Love + War’ lit up in my brain and I thought, ’That’s it.’ Love does not die. It is the antidote to war.’ So that gave me a way to structure the images beginning with History, then War, then Love, then War again. It is softer than the first book but does not shy away from the tragedy of war. It is Love plus War. I am not sure if most people will notice that or not but that was how I saw it.”
Photojournalist Natalie Keyssar arrived in Ukraine shortly after the full-scale invasion started on assignment for TIME magazine. It was her first time seeing a full-scale war, and what she saw shocked her. But among all the horrors of war, she found something else.
“I started gravitating towards photographing couples in love because I would see them everywhere, holding hands and kissing on benches, saying goodbye at train stations, trying to keep things calm for their kids at parks,” she recounts. “The energy around them was like a beacon of hope- the only thing in sight besides the ubiquitous Ukrainian flowers that consistently lifted the grim weight in the air from the west to the front lines. It helped me stay sane and understand the price of what Ukrainians were fighting for and what motivated them.”
Diego Ibarra Sánchez first visited Ukraine in 2018, having been working for over a decade focusing his work on documenting the devastating effects of war on education around the world. He spent two months in two separate trips tracing how the war devastated childhoods. When the war escalated in 2022, he returned to Ukraine to continue his work documenting the war’s impact on education.
“I aim to provoke thought and raise questions, urging the reader to consider the many ways war affects childhood. I want to make readers uncomfortable, to challenge them with questions rather than provide stereotypical answers through my pictures,” Sánchez says. “We’ve often constructed our understanding of war and pain through the lens of Hollywood, but this is the reality—it’s real: the pain, the loss, the smells, the destruction, and the overwhelming sense of hopelessness. Civilians bear a heavy burden, living under the constant threat of crossfire. They are not just numbers or content for television shows; their feelings are real, and so is their pain. Our duty is to document this reality, to create a memory. We are storytellers. We don’t save lives… Without pictures, there is no memory.”
But after two and half years, the war continues, as does the death and destruction that come with it. Russia continues its bloody push to capture more territory from Ukraine. Ukraine has started its own offensive, taking some ground from Russia inside their borders, but it has not given the Russian pause in their attacks. Earlier this month, a Russian missile strike killed more than 50 people and injured many more after hitting a military academy and a hospital, in one of the deadliest attacks in the war.
“The goal I think is always to make our understanding of war human, because anyone who has experienced it on a personal level must surely want it to stop above all else. So if you can make it personal, maybe people will understand that everyone’s suffering is our suffering, their burden, our burden and our responsibility to stop it is shared, indeed elevated, by being in the privileged position of living in a relatively rich and stable country,” Natalie Keyssar says. “I believe in this book- highlighting beauty and bonds through the work of so many photographers I profoundly admire and respect, because I think focusing on the moments of love and kinship is the most human illustration of what’s at stake in war and the best way to help others understand its cost.”
Ukraine: Love+War is published by FotoEvidence and is bilingual in both English and Ukrainian. The production of the book Ukraine: Love+War is supported by the Open Society Foundations Western Balkans and the Grodzins Fund. The book can be ordered on the FotoEvidence website for 70€.
The cover image of this article was taken by Pete Kiehart.
