I’ve been documenting Soviet modernism in Ukraine for four years, taking field trips, photographing, interviewing architects and artists, and raising awareness.
Everything changed overnight, as fire fell from the sky onto unsuspecting Ukrainians across the country. Several missiles hit Kyiv. As the air-raid siren was lifted, I drove through the suddenly empty streets to inspect a Soviet-era residential building heavily damaged by shelling. Walking on broken glass, remembering how I’ve walked the exact spot now occupied by a shell crater, felt surreal. Yet my mind quickly adapted to the new reality. I felt no negative emotions as I resolved to continue my documentation and communicate to my foreign audience what was happening.
Realizing it was unsafe in Kyiv, my family and I embarked on an evacuation trip to Western Ukraine. The ordinary 400-mile, nine-hour drive turned into a nightmarish three-day slog, as highways were packed with block posts and tens of thousands of fleeing cars. I’ve tried to document heritage buildings along the way and in our destination city, Ivano-Frankivsk, but my camera was drawing way too much attention. I was even detained once. Not having a press pass, I resorted to scrolling through online reports of the war, watching as life and the built environment perishes across Ukraine. Then I resumed my documentation.
I was numb way before the war started, as developers, corrupt officials, and tasteless entrepreneurs were destroying precious modernist heritage on a weekly basis. Now, this Russian terror is a real kick in the teeth, but we endure.