under a broken sky

‘Under a Broken Sky’ looks back to Ukraine before Russia’s full-scale invasion, a moment suspended between conflict and the everyday. Although war had already taken root in the east, much of the country lived in a fragile normality, carrying on beneath a sky quietly split by the events of 2014 and the tensions that would later erupt into full-scale invasion.

These portraits and candid scenes explore that fragile in-between: the warmth of ordinary days, the weight of uncertainty, and the subtle fractures running through a nation waiting for something it could not yet name. They are images of life continuing, not untouched by war, but not yet consumed by it - held in the fragile light before the world changed.

As of February 2022, parts of Ukraine had been under Russian occupation for almost eight years. In 2014, many of us watched the struggle of geopolitics and ideology unfold on our television screens as ordinary citizens and politicians fought over the country’s future and against external interference. We witnessed this through the Euromaidan protests, which ended on 22 February 2014, eight years to the day before a new Russian offensive ordered by President Vladimir Putin.