A peaceful shot shows a bearded man herding his animals under a blue sky; another reveals two kids splashing around in an inflatable flamingo.
These pictures taken by Yahontov Oleksii seem as if they are from an idyllic landscape, but the young Ukrainian snapped them on bike rides in between alarms signalling the potential of a missile attack.
“[A bike ride] sometimes helps to distract myself from everything that is happening in our country and, of course, I take a camera with me to record everything,” the 28-year-old said.
On February 24, 2022, Oleksii woke up to the news that Russia was invading his country. He and his family hid and survived the siege on their hometown, Mariupol – a Ukrainian city about 60km from the Russian border. But after 21 days, they fled more than 200km to Zaporizhzhia, where they still live under constant shelling.
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“I was not on the front line – although after what I experienced in Mariupol, you feel that I was,” he recalled.
In Zaporizhzhia, he slowly picked up photography to take his mind off the war.
“It calms me down, especially when I see something beautiful. After a few seconds, you take the camera and look through the lens with thoughts about what the photo will turn out to be.”
Oleksii is one of the many young Ukrainians contributing their snapshots of life under war to an Instagram page called Stuck in Here.
Stuck in here
Orianne Ciantar Olive, a French photographer, created the page two days after the war began last year.
“I wanted to do something to reach the public and draw their attention to the conflict ... show them images that come from the heart of the war but without any images of war,” she said.
Having worked as a photojournalist in many countries marked by conflict, from eastern Europe to the Middle East, Olive wanted to tell the story of war in a different way – “through its daily life, by those who live it and from the inside, by taking a step aside from the imagery of war usually conveyed.”
So she called for young Ukrainians trapped in war to submit pictures documenting their daily lives, and she posted them on social media.
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According to the founder, the project has already received over 3,000 photos from 150 contributors. To accompany the pictures and give context to the person holding the camera, Olive also asked the photographers to write a caption – a thought or a wish – to go with their snapshots.
To raise awareness of the reality of war, Olive has turned this online project into a book and has held exhibitions for it around the world.
“I’m so grateful that they [the Ukrainian youth] agree to share their daily lives and their stories – that they find the time, the energy and the courage to bear witness when they often have no electricity, no home of their own, no networks or, quite simply, no hope,” the founder said.
“I’m going to continue to develop and open up our reflections through these meetings with the public, and through proposals that will allow us to see beyond what we’re used to seeing.”
“Good moments in this sad reality”
As a caption for her contributions to Stuck in Here, Anastasia Pavlova wrote: “Taking a photo on film is one of the things that will help me not to go crazy.”
The 27-year-old marketing manager has been living in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, since the war started.
“In my pictures, you will most often see beautiful people, nature, flowers, just happy moments. But life is different and that’s why the shots are sometimes sad,” she said. “I took pictures of a school in my hometown Zhytomyr that was destroyed by a Russian missile.
“We try to fill our lives with happiness so we don’t go crazy, but war is always with us.”
Julia Lokotosh, who lives in the western part of Ukraine, has shared pictures of her cat, Buddy, as well as flowers and her family on Stuck in Here’s page, but these photos were taken before the war.
“I created a new Instagram page for ... photos from my past life that transport me to that wonderful, carefree life,” the 29-year-old designer said.
After the war began, she couldn’t pick up a camera for a long time. But as life went on, she bought a new camera and started shooting scenes to “remember the good moments in this sad reality”.
“We won’t live the same, but I still believe that soon these dark times will pass and we can resume a happy life.”
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