Don't Worry, I'm Fine

Maryna Syrovatka’s self-published debut book gathers quiet studio portraits and stories of Ukrainians who left their homes after 2022, weaving them with cityscapes into a calm, intimate diary of displacement, memory and everyday life reshaped.

“How are you?” I ask.
There is a pause.

She looks at me as if

the question itself doesn’t make any sense,

as if something is missing.

Such a simple question, typical, mundane even,

but can it be answered?

How do you find words for what it means

to lose

everything,

suddenly and irrevocably?

***

Don’t Worry, I’m Fine is a debut photobook by Maryna Syrovatka, developed from a long-term project about displacement and personal trauma, an archive of a time when lives split into “before” and “after.”

Between 2022 and 2024, Maryna invited people from Ukraine who had left their homes to her studio in Bratislava for conversations and portraits. The neutral, quiet setting removed daily context so the focus could rest entirely on the person. This deliberate detachment took the work beyond straightforward reportage into a more personal, introspective narrative.

The book brings together over one hundred portraits and forty personal stories. It is a visual diary and a time capsule: lives broken into pieces, memories held still in time and space. Close-up portraits are interwoven with photographs of peaceful, everyday scenes, reflecting how heavy, disturbing updates reshaped the way the artist saw the world around her.

The project has been shortlisted for the PHmuseum Photography Grant 2025.