What does the world look like today for people waiting for their loved ones to be released from captivity? Having no news, only faith, hope and love, to live in an environment where norms, rules and laws are created by people whose cynicism has no end. Where their arrogance allows them to not even comply with the ‘laws’ they have created.

What can we hope for? What can a person who has had everything taken away from them – their loved ones – just because they are of Ukrainian nationality or identify as such – rely on in this material world.

These people are forced to bare their pain and feelings for the sake of a letter, so that they can continue to nurture their faith in a fierce struggle for the freedom of their loved ones, in a war against an aggressor who has lost all shame, breaking all laws and committing the most serious sins against the Ukrainian people.

In the spring of 2024, I started working on the project ‘For the Sake of a Letter’ with my colleague Katya Syta because we were deeply concerned about the issues of captive Ukrainians. We wanted to make an intimate and profound statement through photography and collage. The project required personal contact with each of the heroines, including the wives, mothers, sisters, and children of Ukrainian civilian and military prisoners of war, who do not stop fighting for the freedom of their loved ones. The result is a series of portraits and stories that aim to immerse the viewer in the world of strength, patience and incredible love that these women experience.

Before the shoot, I talked to each of the heroines and asked them to bring one or more things to the studio that they associate with their husbands, fathers, brothers, sons in captivity. The women brought shirts, watches, orders, letters, photographs, fishing rods and other personal belongings of their relatives. My heart sank from the pain and intimacy of these things. And this pain was a creative path. I experimented with different formats of photographs, but the idea of combining a portrait, a letter and the objects brought by the women in one frame fascinated me the most.

In addition, I recorded a story with each character about how her loved ones were captured. These strong people have to constantly expose their pain and feelings in order to be heard and seen in this world.