The portrait I made is of a woman called Olha and she works for Ukrainian Railways. So what happened when Russia invaded Ukraine last year? Everybody that worked for Ukrainian Railways just went to work and didn't come home. Cooks, cleaners, fitters and turners, repairing the stations, repairing the train carriages and they kind of made this ecosystem work that kind of resisted the Russian attack. By ferrying people away from the front lines, by transporting troops and munitions, transporting soldiers, diplomats. It became this critical infrastructure in holding off the Russian invasion. So Olha was a deputy train station manager. I photographed her, made this portrait in the in the basement where she hid at the train station when the Russian troops came through her village. After she was able to come out of this she continued to work at the station and had been for the months when I met her and I actually had my translator call her yesterday and check in on her and she's she's alive and well and safe. There's still a lot of missiles hitting her city but all her family's well and her home as well so that was good news.
