Ukraine: Love+War, a Review

by Lauren Walsh

October 16, 2024

FotoEvidence has done it again: A powerful, breathtaking volume focused on the impact of war in Ukraine. The previous FotoEvidence title, Ukraine: A War Crime (2023), specifically documented the first year of the 2022 invasion by Russia. This sister compendium, Ukraine: Love+War, takes a broader look, turning its eye back to the Russian incursion in 2014 and walking forward through 2024, this time with an emphasis on the war’s impact on society, including civilian life, family, and children. Edited by Sarah Leen, with assistant editing by Irynka Hromotska, the book features photographs and witness accounts by 95 Ukrainian and international photojournalists from 23 countries. 

Love+War opens with an essay that provides historically contextualizing information, particularly about Ukraine’s independence in 1991, and Russia’s occupation of Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk regions in 2014, before moving onward to February 2022, which is recent enough that we recall the details of the full-scale invasion of the sovereign Ukrainian nation. Miroslav Laiuk, a Ukrainian war reporter and the author of that introduction, concludes his piece with a commanding thought that sets the foundational tone of the book: “Although war is synonymous with hatred, paradoxically, it reveals an abundance of love, something worth showcasing.”

The subsequent photographs walk us through a progression of time, starting with staggering images by Maxim Dondyuk, scenes of violent confrontation in 2014. The Euromaidan Revolution, a popular uprising in Ukraine in response to then-President Viktor Yanukovych’s move away from the European Union and toward Russia, witnessed large-scale, bloody protests, and ultimately set a part of the historical stage for what played out less than ten years later.

In looking backward through images like Dondyuk’s, the book, in fact, pulls us forward, explaining—both textually and visually—why, for example, patriotic pedagogic initiatives have become important in Ukraine, including at summer camps, where children learn defensive techniques. Photojournalist Diego Ibarra Sanchez observes: “The ongoing war in Ukraine is transforming the notion of Ukraine’s identity and fostering patriotic education in a new generation.” This endeavor, he states, gained prominence in the 1990s and was “reinforced by the Maidan revolution and subsequent Russian invasion of 2014.”

As Love+War eminently demonstrates, 2014 resulted in significant transformations: from the need to adapt to occupation or potential threat and preserve Ukrainian identity to the need to prepare the next generation to defend themselves. We see, for instance, how guns become part of family life in certain regions. This is simultaneously understandable, discomfiting, and upsetting.

By the time we get to February 2022, the effects on children—of fear and the war—are visually that much more dramatic. We witness a lack of access to education, displaced life in shelters, and kids with injuries, or worse. Moreover, there are various drawings by children, photographed by professional journalists, that highlight the plight of their situation. Wrenchingly, combatants and death dominate their cartoony, immature-looking illustrations.

As Anna, who appears to be a teen, and is the subject of a quiet portrait, says: “You walk the streets of your own city where you should be comfortable and calm, but you slouch because you feel that sky above your head, you feel it’s scratchy and dangerous, pulsating above you. You realize that wherever you are, you are in danger.”

Love+War gives a palpable emphasis to women, presented simultaneously as sufferers, protectors, guardians, and rebuilders. Photographer Alena Gram observes: “Every day I see people who are rebuilding their homes and their lives from the ruins and looking into the future. My photographs depict women who survived the Russian aggression.” In particular, her images highlight women of Bucha and Irpin, two towns in the Kyiv region that were occupied by Russian forces. Bucha became internationally known for the mass murder committed there, including, Gram says, nine children.

This book, throughout, reminds that war tears at the seams of society and rips apart the normalcy of domestic routine. Readers behold the visual aftermath of life when it is shattered as homes are destroyed; and view agonizing grief, both unbearable and inescapable, when loved ones die. Meanwhile, families are torn apart when individuals (primarily men) are conscripted or volunteer.¹ As photographer Malgorzataa Smieszek expounds: “Men have left their homes to defend a future they may never see. In quiet homes, families left behind fight their own battle every day, carrying the weight of uncertainty and separation. The effects of war extend well beyond the battlefield.”

In many ways, this volume documents unseen tolls. It is, perhaps, ironic for a collection of photographs to show us what isn’t visible. And yet Love+War — as it visually details the damage done to a country, a society, to communities, to families, to parents, to lovers, to children—also works to vigorously drive home the message that war is as psychologically devastating as it is physically destructive.

But at the same time, the book is titled Love+War, so it isn’t all about devastation. There is love, and it persists in the face of all ruin. For instance, Oksana Parafeniuk has a beautiful essay about the experience of having a child during this war. Both Parafeniuk and her husband, Brendan Hoffman, are photojournalists, and there is nothing simple or uncomplicated about their love story. Parafeniuk explains, “during the weeks before and after Luka’s birth, instead of fully immersing ourselves in happiness, love and new life, we read news on our phones for hours, closely watching the terrible atrocities Russia committed in Mariupol, Bucha, Irpin, Kharkiv and many other Ukrainian cities.” And yet despite such horror, there is also a sense of purpose and forward-looking vision: “Luka was born a refugee but he won’t grow up as one. As hard as it is to balance work, raising a child, and our physical safety, there is a sense of solidarity knowing that everyone is facing similar challenges, and everyone is finding their own way to manage them.” Parafeniuk’s words echo the pain endured and the resilience engendered during war.

Meanwhile, there are sections of this book dedicated to “cuddles” and love letters. These, too, are not straightforward, or rather, not without the dark shadow of war. The archetypal love letter becomes one inflected by casualty. As we learn, “Sgt. Misha Varvarych, 28, an 80th Assault Brigade commander and his fiancé [sic] Ira Botvynska, 19, navigate an altered destiny after he lost both legs fighting, joining a growing number of war wounded amputees. Their unflinching romance speaks not of life interrupted but rather adapted and embraced.” A love story adapted to conflict.

Moreover, given the centrality of family, the editors of Love+War wisely elected to include the role of pets. There is a full two-page spread depicting a multiplicity of owners and pets, mostly cats and dogs, attesting to the ways that animals become family and showcasing the love that people have for their small, furry friends.

Other sections of this significant book give attention to children with diseases, like cancer, amidst war; frontline medical personnel; Marine training; minefields and death; treatment of soldiers; PTSD; POWs; and, near the conclusion, AP photographer Evgeniy Maloletka’s crushingly meaningful photo series titled “The Missing,” which gives visibility to those who are not there. He writes: “War takes away and rarely returns. Many Ukrainian families live with this sadness. But they do not lose hope. They live in the space of Telegram posts and legal documents.”

All told, Love+War is a powerful, if disturbing volume. While the title invokes love and the book includes both imagery and texts attesting to the resilience of love and hope, there is nevertheless an overriding feeling of loss as one pages through these photographs—loss of life, loss of innocence, loss of safety, loss of security. 

This volume is comprehensive, offering both the pre-2022 history as well as a deep look at the impact of the 2022 invasion. Giving this overview through photographs elevates this title well beyond a typical history book. It makes the “lessons” visceral. It forces us to confront the societal, psychological, and familial damage of war. It is emotional, and that is the editors’ point. The reader should feel in response. This, the editors and the documentarians featured in Love+War might say, is one of the strengths of photography. 

In the end, this is a book for anyone interested in Ukrainian-Russian politics, as well as geopolitics broadly; but also for anyone concerned with current events, visual anthropology, and the dynamics of daily life, war, and the social fabric of a nation. It is a tough read, but an important one.