shining light on forgotten stories
I was always drawn to forgotten events and people standing on the margins. For this reason, one of my first student photography projects was an insight into the lives of homeless people finding refuge in abandoned carriages at a former freight station in the centre of Prague.
I have been visiting refugees from Donbas since 2015 and later revisiting the war in Ukraine, which no one cared about at the time. I toured the frontline in the east with Doctors Without Borders, and I recorded testimonies of those who had contracted multi-drug resistant tuberculosis in other parts of the country.
The never-ending war
The war in Ukraine is not over. At the beginning of the summer of 2024, I visited the sites affected by the destruction of the Kakhovka dam and observed the daily life of those for whom explosions and smoke on the horizon are now a normal thing.
Tuberculosis in Ukraine
TB is the deadliest infectious disease in the world, affecting 10 million people and killing 1.4 million each year. Especially in the former Soviet Union, it continues to threaten tens of thousands of people. Among the countries most severely affected is Ukraine, where Doctors Without Borders is helping with treatment.
I was able to shoot a report from the hospital in Zhytomyr, Ukraine, and the nearby sanatorium 'Forest Fairy Tale', where treatment for tuberculosis patients is being carried out under the supervision of Doctors Without Borders and they are coping with the consequences of the disease.