As the trip progressed I became less interested in documenting the chaos caused by destruction but more interested in the state of the country during the war with an eye on reconstruction. The war has somehow become a normal backdrop to everyday life for Ukrainians, and the longer I was there I started to feel the sense of normalcy slip into my everyday life. The air-raid sirens became background music at the cafe, and soldiers say excuse me because their machine gun accidentally bumped up against me in line waiting to pay for groceries.

I went to Ukraine exactly 6 months after Russia invaded in February of 2022. This day marked the 6 month anniversary of the renewed campaign against Ukrainian sovereignty, and coincidentally it was the day of Ukrainian Independence.

As I entered the country I came upon the convoy of trucks lined up to be inspected at the border, and almost no civilian traffic. It was an eerie feeling that I was one of the only people entering the country, especially when I crossed the border and saw that there was a line almost 2 kilometers long of people trying to leave.

On my way to Kyiv I stopped in Lviv to meet with a couple of connections and have a look at what was being done to house people displaced by the conflict. Originally Lviv was going to be a short stop over on my way to the capital. I knew that the focus of the Russian advance in the early days of the war was directed around Kyiv, and I was interested in documenting the landscape of what rebuilding Ukraine looks like amidst the destruction.

I have always been fascinated by the landscapes created by decay of industrial buildings from the history of a bygone era, natural disasters where the forces of nature upend everything we know as normal, and the frequency of construction sites with a temporary chaos that grows into order, but I had never really been to a war zone. The chaos and destruction left behind from hatred and blind aggression is something else all together. It's heartbreak… it's savage… it's devastating.