Kiev Just Before the War

In October 2014, Ukraine was already at war. Kiev was still going about its daily life.

Russia had annexed Crimea, and fighting was underway in eastern Ukraine. In Kiev, ordinary life continued in the parks, markets and streets, through Friday and Saturday nights and into Sunday morning.

I began photographing the places I knew because I wanted to remember that normal life while it was still around me.

Kiev Just Before the War contains 344 photographs arranged as a documentary passage through the city from daytime into night and back into morning.

The book follows six strands: Shevchenko Park, Saturday Night, Friday Night, Sunday Morning, Andreevsky Spusk and Bessarabsky Market.

Nothing in these photographs needs to predict what came later. That was not the point. They record Kiev as I saw it in October 2014: a capital city continuing with its routines while another part of the country was already at war.

The title belongs to that particular moment. Kiev itself was not a battlefield, but the old assumption that ordinary life would simply continue had already disappeared.

344 photographs of Kiev in October 2014.