YOUNIST'

This book is not about war in Ukraine, but about youth growing up with it in the background. It reveals how war seeps into everyday gestures, into pauses, into the way we look, love, and dream. Life doesn’t stop - it becomes more fragile, more intense.

This is my diploma project titled YOUNIST', which means Youth in the Ukrainian language. *

My book is not about the war in Ukraine, but about how it becomes the background of life. There are no grand words here, only those born from silence. Only faces. Young, real, vulnerable, and strong. I photographed Ukrainian youth between the ages of 16 and 29, the same age I was when I left Ukraine and the age I am today. Sixteen is the age when everything happens for the first time: first love, first pain, first fear, first choices. No matter which country you grow up in, coming of age is always a deep, fragile, but essential experience. In the country where I grew up and where war is now part of everyday life, there are still young people who fall in love, who discover new feelings, doubt, dream, and simply live. The war didn’t erase these feelings. It made them deeper. My book is about the gaze. About how war is reflected in gestures, in tones, in pauses. About how we grow up not by plan, but by circumstance. 

Today, I am a Swiss citizen with Ukrainian roots, which is why this project means so much to me. I returned to Ukraine to see and feel what it means to live in my native country today. I am proud of the Ukrainian people, and especially of the young generation. *