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.”

Maybe this book is about you, who drove for days to bring your children to safety. Or you, who were trapped in a basement in Mariupol. Or you, who lost your kid, mom, dad, husband. Or you, whose life “simply” changed forever.

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 moved the work beyond straightforward reportage toward 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 publication is a tactile object, self-published and artist-led, developed with Dutch designer Sybren Kuiper (-SYB-), with careful attention to the interaction between images and text.

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