Ukraine daily (pre-2022)
All these images were taken before Russia’s full scale invasion in 2022.
August 20, 2018. Natasha holds her son Lev while they watch military vehicles go by. This was one of the rehearsals that had been happening that week around Kyiv for the Independence Day celebration parade. Lev was one year old and Natasha said this was the first time he saw vehicles like these and he was very surprised and a bit shocked.
2010. This was not my first time in the city. I had been to Kyiv before, but I was still very much a stranger trying to discover it at that time. I remember fondly the very (very!) long walks a couple of friends would take me on to show me around.
The photo shows Bessarabska market, right in the centre of Kyiv, at the junction of Khreschatyk, Taras Shevchenko, and Velyka Vasylkivska streets.
I remember that the two ladies in the bottom left corner of the photo were eyeing me very suspiciously. I was taking pictures, and they thought I might be a city inspector or something. Once they realised I was not, the mood changed completely, and we tried to talk a little around the language barrier. They were tempting me into buying some large tins of caviar, which I did not. We also managed a few quick portraits.
Thinking about it, I have never been back inside this market since.
September 2012. The very first time I was in Kyiv, back in 2010, I stayed near Kontraktova Square, right in the heart of Podil — one of Kyiv’s historical neighbourhoods. Although I would later live in another district, I have always thought of this particular square as a kind of microcosm of the city, even if it has become much more touristic in recent years, before the full-scale invasion.
2017. In good weather or bad, the tables in Taras Shevchenko Park, in central Kyiv, are filled with chessboards and surrounded by spectators.
2015. Inline skating on a Sunday afternoon, Mykolaiv.