In Byron Smith’s new photography book, Ukrainians are pictured fleeing by any means possible — crammed into cars with pet dogs, waiting to board trains to Poland, or simply taking to suburban streets with infants and backpacks in hand.
As a photojournalist whose work often focuses on the plight of migrants (a mission that has taken him from Greek refugee camps to the battle for ISIS-controlled Mosul, Iraq, in 2016 and 2017), his instinct was quite the opposite: to run toward the danger.
“I feel like if you see these masses of people fleeing, it would be fake for me to really sympathize with them if I didn't go and see what they were fleeing from,” Smith told CNN in a video interview from Istanbul, Turkey.
Documenting Smith’s travels through Ukraine in the year following Russia’s unprovoked invasion in February 2022, “Testament ‘22 – A Visual Road Diary Through a War Zone” is a contemplative portrait of a nation at war.
The 192-page tome juxtaposes color with monochrome, defiance with despair, hope with fear.
The title references “My Testament,” an 1845 poem by Taras Shevchenko in which the author asks to be buried among the fields, rivers and steppes of his “beloved Ukraine.”
The photographer recalled reading it as he first ventured to Kyiv.
“It's pretty much (Shevchenko’s) last will and testament... And I'm riding into this war zone, the Russians are invading and I’m like, ‘Wow, I actually don't have a will and testament for myself, for my parents or family, or even anything to really leave behind for anybody.’
That played on me a bit, and it became the backbone for the story.”
The book serves, too, as a testament to the people of Ukraine, whose stories Smith felt compelled to share with the world.
Its publisher, Verlag Kettler, believes the photographer’s body of work can contribute to the “overwhelming evidence” of Russian crimes.
