The big picture: Byron Smith finds everyday defiance in war-ravaged Ukraine

Like the Ukrainian man cycling along the tank-flattened road in Kupiansk in the east of his country, you almost get used to seeing burned-out and blown-up cars in Byron Smith’s photographs. But he always finds a way to rattle you from that kind of complacency. Here, it is the details of the determination of the man on the bike: the worldly goods tied to his handlebars and the mudguard rack; the steely eyes-front concentration on his destination; the mundane fact that he has carefully tucked his trouser leg into his sock – even in wartime, especially in wartime, accidents are to be avoided.
Smith, a New York-born freelance photographer, travelled more than 10,000 miles in Ukraine in 2022, the first year of the Russian invasion. A monograph of his extraordinary pictures, Testament ’22, is published this month. One inspiration for his travels was the journeys in 1844 of the Ukrainian artist and poet Taras Shevchenko, who produced a series of etchings of a long-ago generation of his countrymen – perennially suffering under Russian expansionism – with the aim of buying his family out of serfdom.
Smith’s portraits and documentary pictures are no less redolent of struggle and defiance. Kupiansk was one of the first cities to fall in the invasion, on 24 February 2022. Over that summer the city became the logistical hub of the Russian advance into Ukraine, but a counteroffensive in September restored Ukrainian authority, which in turn prompted a devastating wave of Russian shelling that killed dozens of civilians. Smith’s images capture all that trauma at a human level: “I made the pictures,” he has said, “to show the strength, dignity, resilience and courage of a population who didn’t ask to bear this burden but who still believe they are doing it so… other democratic nations will not have to.”