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.

This trip was essentially a fact-finding trip to see what the reality of the situation is on the ground. I went into it with a certain set of ideas that have stood up to assumption, but I have also realized there are more productive ways of approaching solutions to this crisis.

While the international construction community is stepping forward in full force to get the construction contracts needed to rebuild the country, a significant part of the population will suffer while negotiations are being held and pockets are being stuffed with cash.

There is a clear and urgent need for relief housing to assist with getting people out of the elements as soon as possible..

The acute problems created by the war are compounded by the problems created by the poverty that existed before. There is a giant divide between modern Ukraine and its parents. The modern Ukranians have adapted to an international community brought on by the advent of the internet and blend right into the European identity, while the previous generation struggles to find relevance from a mixed history of corruption and nepotism.

A large part of the struggle for Ukraine is to answer the question of what it means to be Ukrainian. Thanks to this conflict the country is going through a renaissance of thinking about its identity, and it is creating a sort of social glue that never existed before.