photo essay about war

Two weeks of war in Ukraine – photo essay

Powerful photojournalism has illustrated the brutal conflict in Ukraine since the Russian invasion began two weeks ago, forcing more than 2 million people to flee. As destruction rains down, the invaders are being met by strong resistance from the Ukrainian armed forces and volunteer fighters

• Russia-Ukraine war: latest updates

A fter the deployments, the denials and the diplomacy came the invasion and, with it, a war that was thoroughly foretold and yet still shocking in its savagery. A war with no rules, no limits and no quarter.

The first two weeks of the conflict – a fortnight for observers but a cold eternity for the people of Ukraine – have already yielded countless disturbing images even as Europe, a continent with a short memory, pinches itself raw to make sure that what should not, and could not, ever happen here again really is happening here again.

Ukrainian firefighters try to extinguish a fire after an airstrike hit a block of flats in Chuhuiv, Kharkiv Oblast. Photograph: Wolfgang Schwan/Anadolu Agency

For all their dreadful novelty, the photographs from Kyiv, Kharkiv, Irpin and Mariupol stir memories of Guernica in 1937, of London in the blitz, and of Sarajevo under siege.

Fresher still are the memories of Russia’s dress rehearsal in Syria.

At dawn on 24 February, Vladimir Putin announced his long-dreaded invasion, or, as he put it in a phrase destined for the annals of martial euphemism, “a special military operation”.

A wounded woman outside a block of flats damaged by airstrikes near Kharkiv on 24 February. Above right: Ukrainian security forces help a man hurt in an airstrike on a block of flats in Chuhuiv. Photographs: Wolfgang Schwan/Anadolu Agency

Military helicopters, thought to be Russian, fly over the outskirts of Kyiv on 24 February.

Less than an hour after the Russian president vowed to bring about what he described as “the demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine”, the country found itself under full-scale attack. Sirens sounded as explosions rippled through Ukraine’s cities, tanks rolled into its territories and helicopters strafed homes outside the capital.

A mother and child try to sleep in the Kyiv subway, being used as a bomb shelter, on 24 February. Photograph: Emilio Morenatti/AP

Missiles and shells, apparently targeting infrastructure near major cities including Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol, Dnipro and Odesa, killed hundreds of civilians and transformed blocks of flats into shattered and smoking ruins.

People grabbed blankets and sleeping bags – as well as toys and colouring books to distract their children – and hurried into shelters or underground stations.

When they emerged, many found their homes gone, damaged beyond repair, or hidden by curtains of flame and smoke.

The scale, swiftness and mercilessness of the first stage of the destruction were captured in two pictures that were used around the world.

Natali Sevriukova pauses next to her home in Kyiv, damaged in a rocket attack on 25 February. Photograph: Emilio Morenatti/AP

In one, a woman stands before a block of flats and stares, dazed, into the camera. There is blood on the bandage wrapped around her bruised head and blood on her teeth.

In the other, a woman called Natali Sevriukova holds a carefully manicured hand to her face and cries. Behind her is the rocket-destroyed block that was her home 24 hours earlier.

A Ukrainian territorial defence fighter examines a destroyed Russian infantry mobility vehicle GAZ Tigr after fighting in Kharkiv on 27 February. Photograph: Sergey Bobok/AFP

A distressed woman waits while paramedics perform CPR on a girl injured during shelling, at city hospital in Mariupol, on 27 February. The child did not survive. Photograph: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

People hoping to flee gather at Kyiv main railway station on 28 February. Photograph: Roman Pilipey/EPA

The deliberate targeting of civilian areas, a tactic widely employed to sow fear and despair in Syria, soon became one of the hallmarks of the Russian offensive.

A military convoy is strung along the highway, north of Ivankiv, on the approach to Kyiv, on 28 February. Satellite Image: Maxar Tech

A member of the Ukrainian emergency services looks up at the Kharkiv city hall after shelling on 1 March. Photograph: Pavel Dorogoy/AP

On 1 March, videos showed the orange flashes and grey smoke puffs of Grad missiles hitting residential buildings in the centre of Ukraine’s second-biggest city, Kharkiv.

Emergency workers carry a body out of Kharkiv city hall after the Russian shelling on 1 March. Photograph: Sergey Bobok/AFP

The city’s mayor said nine people had been killed and 37 injured on what he described as “a very difficult day”. He added that four of those killed died when they emerged from a shelter to find water. A family of five, including three children, were burned alive in their car.

A residential building in Borodyanka, in the Kyiv region, smoulders after shelling on 3 March. Photograph: Maksim Levin/Reuters

Damage after the shelling of buildings in downtown Kharkiv on 3 March. Photograph: Sergey Kozlov/EPA

People retrieve what they can from a burning house shelled in the city of Irpin, north-west of Kyiv, on 4 March. Right: Residents evacuate Irpin during heavy shelling and bombing on 5 March. Photographs: Aris Messinis/AFP

By Thursday 10 March, the port city of Mariupol had been under sustained bombardment for nine days, its buildings, parks and shops pummelled by Grad and Smerch rockets and Tochka-U missiles, and its inhabitants reduced to drinking the snow that had settled on the rubble.

A Ukrainian serviceman surveys the vertical tail fin of a Russian Su-34 bomber in a damaged building in Kharkiv on 8 March. Photograph: Andrew Marienko/AP

A day earlier, in an attack that plumbed fresh depths of depravity, a Russian warplane dropped a bomb on Mariupol’s maternity hospital number nine. Three people, among them a girl, died. Seventeen patients and members of staff were injured.

A injured pregnant woman is stretchered from a children hospital in Mariupol, evacuated after a Russia army bombardment on 9 March. Photograph: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

One of the pictures taken that day shows a heavily pregnant woman being stretchered through the smoke and snow past the shell of the hospital. Another shows a young and bloody expectant mother navigating a debris-strewn stairwell carrying blankets and a plastic bag.

The regional military administration estimates 1,207 people have been killed, with many more likely to lie under the debris. On Wednesday alone, 47 people were buried in a mass grave.

Mariupol’s deputy mayor, Sergei Orlov, said the words “bombardment” and “cruelty” did not come close to describing what was going on in the city, whose residents are trying to flee at the rate of 2,000 to 3,000 a day.

An injured pregnant woman picks her way downstairs in the damaged maternity hospital in Mariupol on 9 March. Photograph: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

“They have used aviation, artillery, multiple rocket launchers, Grads and other types of weapons we don’t even know about,” he told foreign reporters. “This isn’t simply treacherous. It’s a war crime and pure genocide.”

Ukrainian refugees queue to apply for residency permits at Prague’s foreigner police headquarters on 2 March. Photograph: Michal Čížek/AFP/Getty Images

Newly arrived refugees file past Polish army soldiers after crossing from Ukraine into Poland at the Medyka border, eastern Poland, on 9 March. Photograph: Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images

A girl fleeing the conflict looks out from a bus heading to the Moldovan capital, Chișinău, after crossing the Moldova-Ukraine border. Above right: Kyryl, a nine-year-old refugee from Kyiv, and his dog, Hugo, arrive at the Hungarian border town of Zahony on 2 March. Photographs: Nikolay Doychinov/AFP, Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Although Ukraine has dismissed the “humanitarian corridors” offered by Russia as “completely immoral”, as they allow fleeing civilians escape only to Russia or its ally Belarus, the exodus so far has been gargantuan.

Thousands of Ukrainian refugees, mostly women and children, arrive in Medyka, the crossing between Poland from Ukraine, on 7 March. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian

Friday’s figures from the UN’s refugee agency show that 2,504,893 people have fled Ukraine since dawn broke on 24 February, bringing with it the start of Putin’s “special military operation”.

Ukraine’s neighbours have borne the brunt of the evacuation, with Poland alone taking in more than 1.5 million refugees. The UK, apparently bedevilled by consular issues, had issued 850 visas by Wednesday this week.

A destroyed tank lies at the roadside after fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces on a main approach near Brovary, north of Kyiv, on 10 March. Photograph: Felipe Dana/AP

The past two weeks have tested not only the resolve of the Ukrainian people and the supposed might of the Russian military, but also the determination, unity and compassion of the west and the wider world.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy , has been clear from day one about what is at stake.

“What we have heard today are not just missile blasts, fighting and the rumble of aircraft,” he said on the day of the invasion.

Civilians and press run for their lives during a Russian attack while they were being evacuated from Irpin on 6 March. Photograph: Emin Sansar/Anadolu Agency

“This is the sound of a new iron curtain, which has come down and is closing Russia off from the civilised world. Our national task is to make sure this curtain does not fall across our land.”

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World War I in Photos: Introduction

• Alan Taylor
• April 27, 2014

A century ago, an assassin, a Serbian nationalist, killed the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary as he visited Sarajevo. This act was the catalyst for a massive conflict that lasted four years. More than 65 million soldiers were mobilized by more than 30 nations, with battles taking place around the world. Industrialization brought modern weapons, machinery, and tactics to warfare, vastly increasing the killing power of armies. Battlefield conditions were horrific, typified by the chaotic, cratered hellscape of the Western Front, where soldiers in muddy trenches faced bullets, bombs, gas, bayonet charges, and more. On this 100-year anniversary, I've gathered photographs of the Great War from dozens of collections, some digitized for the first time, to try to tell the story of the conflict, those caught up in it, and how much it affected the world. This entry is part 1 of a 10-part series on World War I . In this installment, I hope to give a glimpse of the war's beginnings, and a preview of what is to come.

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Soldiers of an Australian 4th Division field artillery brigade walk on a duckboard track laid across a muddy, shattered battlefield in Chateau Wood, near Hooge, Belgium, on October 29, 1917. This was during the Battle of Passchendaele, fought by British forces and their allies against Germany for control of territory near Ypres, Belgium. #

Nine European Sovereigns at Windsor for the funeral of King Edward VII in May of 1910, four years before the war began. Standing, from left to right: King Haakon VII of Norway, Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria, King Manuel II of Portugal, Kaiser Wilhelm II of the German Empire, King George I of Greece and King Albert I of Belgium. Seated, from left to right: King Alfonso XIII of Spain, King-Emperor George V of the United Kingdom and King Frederick VIII of Denmark. Within the next decade, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Tsar Ferdinand's empires would engage in bloody warfare with the nations led by King Albert I and King George V. The war was also a family affair, as Kaiser Wilhelm II was a first cousin to King George V, and an uncle to King Albert I. Of the remaining monarchs pictured, over the next decade one would be assassinated (Greece), three would keep their nations neutral (Norway, Spain, and Denmark), and two would be forced out of power by revolutions. #

In 1914, Austria-Hungary was a powerful and huge country, larger than Germany, with nearly as many citizens. It had been ruled by Emperor Franz Joseph I since 1848, who had been grooming his nephew, Archduke Franz Ferdinand as the heir to the throne. In this photo, taken in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, a visiting Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Czech Countess Sophie Chotek, are departing a reception at City Hall. Earlier that morning, on the way to the hall, their motorcade had been attacked by one of a group of Serbian nationalist assassins, whose bomb damaged one car and injured dozens of bystanders. After this photo was taken, the Archduke and his wife climbed into the open car, headed for a nearby hospital to visit the wounded. Just blocks away though, the car paused to turn around, directly in front of another assassin, who walked up to the car and fired two shots, killing both Franz Ferdinand and his wife. #

Assassin Gavrilo Princip (left) and his victim Archduke Franz Ferdinand, both photographed in 1914. Princip, a 19 year old a Bosnian Serb who killed the Archduke, was recruited along with five others by Danilo Ilic, a friend and fellow Bosnian Serb, who was a member of the Black Hand secret society. Their ultimate goal was the creation of a Serbian nation. The conspiracy, assisted by members of Serbia's military, was quickly uncovered, and the attack became a catalyst that would soon set massive armies marching against each other around the world. All of the assassins were captured and tried. Thirteen received medium-to-short prison sentences, including Princip (who was too young for the death penalty, and received the maximum, a 20 year sentence). Three of the conspirators were executed by hanging. Four years after the assassination, Gavrilo Princip died in prison, brought down by tuberculosis, which was worsened by harsh conditions brought on by the war he helped set in motion. #

A Bosnian Serb nationalist (possibly Gavrilo Princip, more likely bystander Ferdinand Behr), is captured by police and taken to the police station in Sarajevo, on June 28, 1914, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian-Hungarian throne, and his wife. #

Shortly after the assassination, Austria-Hungary issued a list of demands to Serbia, demanding they halt all anti-Austro-Hungarian activity, dissolve certain political groups, remove certain political officers, and arrest those within its borders who participated in the assassination, among other things -- with 48 hours to comply. Serbia, with the backing of their ally Russia, politely refused to fully comply, and mobilized their army. Soon after, Austria-Hungary, backed by their ally Germany, declared war on Serbia on July 28 1914. A network of treaties and alliances then kicked in, and within a month's time, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, France, Britain, and Japan had all mobilized their armies and declared war. In this photo, taken in August of 1914, Prussian guard infantry in new field gray uniforms leave Berlin, Germany, heading for the front lines. Girls and women along the way greet and hand flowers to them. #

Belgian soldiers with their bicycles in Boulogne, France, 1914. Belgium asserted neutrality from the start of the conflict, but provided a route into France that the German army coveted, so Germany declared it would "treat her as an enemy", if Belgium did not allow German troops free passage. #

The conflict, called the Great War by those involved, was the first large-scale example of modern warfare - technologies still use in battle today were introduced in large scale forms then, some (like chemical attacks) were outlawed and later viewed as war crimes. The newly-invented aeroplane took its place as an observation platform, a bomber, and an anti-personnel weapon, even as an anti-aircraft defense, shooting down enemy aircraft. Here, French soldiers gather around a priest as he blesses an aircraft on the Western Front, in 1915. #

Between 1914 and the war's end in 1918, more than 65 million soldiers were mobilized worldwide - requiring mountains of supplies and gear. Here, on a table set up outside a steel helmet factory in Lubeck, Germany, a display is set up, showing the varying stages of the helmet-making process for Stahlhelms for the Imperial German Army. #

A Belgian soldier smokes a cigarette during a fight between Dendermonde and Oudegem, Belgium, in 1914. Germany had hoped for a swift victory against France, and invaded Belgium in August of 1914, heading into France. The German army swept through Belgium, but was met with stiffer resistance than it anticipated in France. The Germans approached to within 70 kilometers of Paris, but were pushed back a ways, to a more stable position, which would become battlefields lined with trenches, fought over for years. In this opening month of World War I, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians were killed or wounded -- France suffered its greatest single-day loss on August 22nd, when more than 27,000 soldiers were killed by rifle and machine-gun, thousands more wounded. #

German soldiers celebrate Christmas in the field, in December of 1914. #

The front in France, a scene on a battlefield at midnight. Opposing armies were sometimes situated in trenches just yards apart from each other. #

An Austrian soldier, dead on a battleground, in 1915. #

Austro-Hungarian troops executing Serbian civilians, likely ca. 1915. Serbians suffered greatly during the war years, counting more than a million casualties by 1918, including losses in battle, mass executions, and the worst typhus epidemic in history. #

The Japanese fleet off the coast of China in 1914. Japan sided with the United Kingdom and its allies, attacking German interests in the Pacific, including island colonies and leased territories on the Chinese mainland. #

View from an airplane of biplanes flying in formation, ca. 1914-18. #

The Salonica (Macedonian) front, Indian troops at a Gas mask drill. Allied forces joined with Serbs to battle armies of the Central Powers and force a stable front throughout most of the war. #

Unloading of a horse in Tschanak Kale, Turkey, equipment for the Austro-Hungarian army. #

The French battleship Bouvet, in the Dardanelles. It was assigned to escort troop convoys through the Mediterranean at the start of the war. In early 1915, part of a larger group of combined British and French ships sent to clear Turkish defenses of the Dardanelles, Bouvet was hit by at least eight Turkish shells, then struck a mine, which caused so much damage, the ship sank within a few minutes. While a few men survived the sinking and were rescued, nearly 650 went down with the ship. #

1915, British soldiers on motorcycles in the Dardanelles, part of the Ottoman Empire, prior to the Battle of Gallipoli. #

A dog belonging to a Mr. Dumas Realier, dressed as a German soldier, in 1915. #

"Pill box demolishers" being unloaded on the Western Front. These enormous shells weighed 1,400 lbs. Their explosions made craters over 15 ft. deep and 15 yards across. #

A motorcycle dispatch rider studying the details on a grave marker, while in the background an observation balloon is preparing to ascend. The writing on the marker says in German: "Hier ruhen tapfere franzosische Krieger", or Here rest brave French warriors. #

Highlanders, soldiers from the United Kingdom, take sandbags up to the front in 1916. #

British artillery bombards German positions on the Western Front. #

A British officer leads the way "over the top" amid the bursting of German shells. #

American soldiers, members of Maryland's 117th Trench Mortar Battery, operating a trench mortar. This gun and crew kept up a continuous fire throughout the raid of March 4, 1918 in Badonviller, Muerthe et Modselle, France. #

A German soldier throws a hand grenade against enemy positions, at an unknown battlefield during World War I. #

French soldiers, some wounded, at the taking of Courcelles, in the department of Oise, France, in June of 1918. #

A stretcher bearer patrol painfully makes its way through knee-deep mud near Bol Singhe during the British advance in Flanders, on August 20, 1917. #

German soldiers practice with a flame-thrower on April 4, 1917. #

Candor, Oise, France. Soldiers and a dog outside a ruined house in 1917. #

British tanks pass dead Germans who were alive before the cavalry advanced a few minutes before the picture was taken. World War I saw the debut of tank warfare, with varying levels of success, mostly poor. Many of the earlier models broke down frequently, or got bogged down in mud, fell into trenches, or, (slow-moving) were directly targeted by artillery. #

Western Front, German A7V tanks drive through a village near Rheims in 1918. #

Ottoman Turk Machine Gun Corps at Tel esh Sheria Gaza Line, in 1917, part of the Sinai and Palestine Campaign. British troops were battling the the Ottoman Empire (supported by Germany), for control of the Suez Canal, Sinai Peninsula, and Palestine. #

A bridge across the mud flats in Flanders, Belgium, in 1918. #

An aerial view of the Hellish moonscape of the Western Front during World War I. Hill of Combres, St. Mihiel Sector, north of Hattonchatel and Vigneulles. Note the criss-cross patterns of multiple generations of trenches, and the thousands of craters left by mortars, artillery, and the detonation of underground mines. #

A color photograph of Allied soldiers on a battlefield on the Western Front. This image was taken using the Paget process, an early experiment in color photography. #

A German ammunition column, men and horses equipped with gas masks, pass through woods contaminated by gas in June of 1918. #

German soldiers flee a gas attack in Flanders, Belgium, in September of 1917. Chemical weapons were a part of the arsenal of World War I armies from the beginning, ranging from irritating tear gases to painful mustard gas, to lethal agents like phosgene and chlorine. #

Members of the German Red Cross, carrying bottle of liquid to revive those who have succumbed to a gas attack. #

British enter Lille, France, in October of 1918, after four years of German occupation. Beginning in the summer of 1918, Allied forces began a series of successful counteroffensives, breaking through German lines and cutting off supply lines to Austro-Hungarian forces. As Autumn approached, the end of the war seemed inevitable. #

The USS Nebraska, a United States Navy battleship, with dazzle camouflage painted on the hull, in Norfolk, Virginia, on April 20, 1918. Dazzle camouflage, widely used during the war years, was designed to make it difficult for an enemy to estimate the range, heading, or speed of a ship, and make it a harder target. #

A German dog hospital, treating wounded dispatch dogs coming from the front, ca. 1918. #

U.S. Army Company A, Ninth Machine Gun Battalion. Three soldiers man a machine gun set up in railroad shop in Chateau Thierry, France, on June 7, 1918. #

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Ukraine’s War—in Photos

A haunting look at six months of russia’s war in ukraine in pictures..

• Jack Detsch

Russia’s War in Ukraine

Understanding the conflict two years on.

More on this topic

On Feb. 24, lonely Ukrainian border patrol officers stood guard at Crimean border posts. These posts had marked the unofficial line that had stood between Ukraine and Russia for nearly eight years, since Russian forces had forcibly annexed the peninsula. As the world watched, and Russian bombs began to ring out, Moscow’s army began barreling through the checkpoints.

The father and fiancee of a soldier killed three weeks before his wedding and the end of his contract grieve at his grave in a military cemetery in Dnipro, Ukraine, on Aug. 20. Emre Caylak photos for Foreign Policy

As air raid sirens went off all over Ukraine, U.S. and Western officials feared the worst. For weeks, across Ukraine, there had been stone-faced calm as American official after official—up to President Joe Biden himself—took to the White House podium nearly 5,000 miles away to warn of an impending Russian attack. But Russian President Vladimir Putin raised those warnings to a fever pitch. Within minutes of Putin announcing a “special military operation,” Russian troops that had been uncoiling to strike for weeks surged over Ukraine’s border, from all directions. Missile strikes laced into Ukraine’s biggest cities: Odesa, Kharkiv, Kyiv, and Dnipro. U.S. intelligence officials believed that Kyiv could fall within the week. In the wake of the Taliban’s lightning sweep through Afghanistan just months earlier, American officials didn’t know whether Ukrainian troops would stand their ground or flee their posts. And a back-and-forth fight was breaking out over Hostomel Airport in Kyiv’s suburbs that could have given Russia an air bridge to control the capital.

Just days later, the same officials who had wondered if there would be a Ukraine after the Russian assault at all were wondering if the war-torn country had masterminded a new style of warfare. The seeming Russian blitz suddenly wasn’t. The invasion of Kyiv turned into a 40-mile-long traffic jam that ensnared thousands of Russian vehicles, leaving them sitting ducks for Ukrainian-operated Bayraktar drones from Turkey and over-the-shoulder missiles from the United States and United Kingdom. Ukraine’s sub-NATO-grade air defenses have held for six months. And then, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—the former comic, the man who said he survived multiple assassination attempts from Russian agents—walked outside of the presidential palace flanked by a suite of advisors and announced to the world that he was still alive. 

Even as the Russian drive on the capital ran out of steam, Putin’s forces showed little regard for civilian lives. Russia’s drive into Ukraine’s south, arguably the most successful leg of the multipronged invasion, stalled outside of Mykolaiv. But as Russian troops vacated the suburbs ringing Kyiv, occupied for well over a month after the start of the war, the scenes evoked the brutality of Srebrenica and Chechnya: All around the world, magazines were filled with pictures of Ukrainians dead in the roadside, including a 52-year-old makeup artist, slain with her unfurled hand clutching at the earth. And Putin’s campaign, which he said was aimed at protecting Russian speakers in Ukraine, did not spare them: In the Russian-speaking city of Mariupol, the Kremlin’s air force bombed a theater housing hundreds of refugees, part of a scorched-earth fight for the city that left tens of thousands of Ukrainians dead, according to local officials. Some bodies were lost in the rubble of rocket strikes, and some residents were forced to bury their loved ones in their front yards. 

Now, the war is entering a new stage, with both sides licking their wounds from the high-intensity combat of the early days and Zelensky keen on taking back swaths of territory seized by Russia since February. The battle lines have mostly frozen over the last two months. Ukraine—which has blocked draft-eligible men from leaving the country—has shipped out thousands of citizens who have never fought before to training grounds in Britain and Eastern Europe, hoping to turn citizens into soldiers. But all around them, the Ukrainian flags, the twisted remains of Russian tanks, and the makeshift monuments of battles freshly fought are constant reminders of the cost of six months of war—and the brutal days to come. Here is what it looked like, through the lens of one of the photojournalists who’s been there since before it started.

An abandoned village on the outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine, on Feb. 4, ahead of Russia’s invasion.

Protesters gather in front of the Donetsk Regional Theatre of Drama in Mariupol after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to formally recognize Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions as independent on Feb. 21.

Destined for the capital city of Kyiv, people leave the Mariupol train station at the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.

On Aug. 17, Eduard stands in front of his house, which was destroyed by a Russian airstrike in Nikopol, Ukraine.

A man walks by a destroyed building that was hit by a Russian rocket strike in Nikopol on Aug. 17.

Colorful flowers at a cemetery memorialize soldiers from Nikopol, Ukraine, on Aug. 17.

Lena, the mother of Denis Mikhailovich, grieves at his burial site in the Dnipro military cemetery on Aug. 20. Mikhailovich, a 26-year-old soldier, was killed while fighting Russian forces in Ukraine’s Luhansk region in May.

Emre Caylak is a Turkish American photojournalist based in Istanbul who covers social and environmental topics around the world.

Jack Detsch is a Pentagon and national security reporter at Foreign Policy . Twitter:  @JackDetsch

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• Photojournalism Links

The 10 Best Photo Essays of the Month

This month’s Photojournalism Links collection highlights 10 excellent photo essays from across the world, including Tomas Munita ‘s photographs from Gaza and Israel, made on assignment for the New York Times . The work, coinciding with the first anniversary of last year’s 50 day war between Israel and Palestinian militant groups, consists of eight innovative stop-motion-sequences which take us to the streets, hospitals, and homes on both sides of the conflict, and provide an immersive glimpse of how the two groups of communities are coping, one year after.

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Lynsey Addario: Inside the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Diamond Mines (TIME LightBox) Terrific set of images looking at Congo’s diamond mining communities.

Andres Kudacki: Spain’s Housing Crisis (TIME LightBox) Powerful three-year project on the country’s home evictions, now on show at Visa pour l’Image photojournalism festival.

Mary Ellen Mark: New Orleans (CNN Money) The legendary photographer’s final assignment, done ahead of Hurricane Katrina’s 10th anniversary.

Daniel Etter: Hands Across Water (Al Jazeera America) Moving series on a small Sea-Watch ship, with a rotating crew of just eight volunteers, trying to save refugees and migrants in the Mediterranean.

Sergey Ponomarev: On Island of Lesbos, a Microcosm of Greece’s Other Crisis: Migrants (The New York Times ) Dramatic photographs of refugees and migrants arriving to the Greek island.

Allison Joyce: Child Marriage Bangladesh (International Business Times) Heartbreaking pictures of a 15-year-old Bangladeshi girl’s wedding | See also Joyce’s other Bangladeshi child marriage series at Mashable .

Andrea Bruce: Romania’s Disappearing Girls (Al Jazeera America) The Noor photographer’s work shows how poverty and desperation drive Romanian girls into the arms of sex traffickers.

Matt Black: Geography of Poverty: Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 (MSNBC) Second and third chapters of the Magnum photographer’s ambitious project mapping poverty around the U.S.

Mikko Takkunen is an Associate Photo Editor at TIME. Follow him on Twitter @photojournalism .

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Salwan Georges/The Washington Post/Getty Images

The photos that have defined the war in Ukraine

By Kyle Almond and Brett Roegiers, CNN May 13, 2022

Editor’s note: This gallery contains graphic images. Viewer discretion is advised.

It was getting dark, and the temperature was dropping. As a train approached a crowded platform in Odesa, Ukraine, desperate refugees started running toward it, tripping over one another. There were only so many who could fit.

“Making it inside the train was high-stakes,” recalled Salwan Georges, a Washington Post photographer. “It meant an escape from the horror and devastation they were facing every day in eastern and southern Ukraine.”

This was 11 days after Russia had invaded Ukraine following months of military buildup and brinkmanship. Refugees were boarding trains and heading to the country’s west, where they would be able to cross into neighboring countries for safety.

The train station in Odesa had turned all of its lights off to protect people from being targeted by the Russians.

“Out of the darkness, I noticed only one train window had a dim light coming through it,” Georges said. “On the platform side of that window, a man stood with his hand on the glass. On the other side, a woman mirrored his gesture from inside the train. The train was getting ready to move.

“I approached the man, who I later came to know as Georgiy Keburia, with my camera down. He acknowledged me with a subtle nod, giving his approval for me to document him saying goodbye to his wife, Maya, and their children. I kept my distance as the scene unfolded. It was one of the most emotional situations I had to witness in my life — and it took me a while to process what I had seen.”

The train started to move slowly away from the platform, and Keburia walked alongside it, crying with his wife until it sped away. Georges walked next to Keburia in silence as he returned to the train station. After a few minutes, they communicated with the help of Google Translate. Keburia’s family was heading to Poland, and he, like many Ukrainian men, was staying back to defend Ukraine.

It reminded Georges of his own experience in the late 1990s, when he boarded a bus in Iraq and had to say goodbye to his father, a soldier who had to stay back as the country prepared for war.

“Being born in a war-torn country of Iraq and having to flee at the age of 8, I didn’t get the chance to document the toll the war took on my country,” he said. “Now, I’ve got the chance to do it in Ukraine.”

Here are some other powerful photos that we have seen out of Ukraine since Russia invaded on February 24.

Lynsey Addario was in Irpin, Ukraine, a suburb of the capital of Kyiv, to cover civilians fleeing the violence. She didn’t expect to witness a family being killed in an apparent Russian mortar attack.

“I was photographing and I saw the people sort of dragging their children and dragging the elderly as the rounds got closer and closer,” she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “And I was looking through my lens thinking, ‘It’s not possible that the rounds are coming closer, because they know that there are civilians here.’ ”

She watched as a mortar killed Tetiana Perbyinis and her two children. In the photo above, taken on March 6, Ukrainian soldiers try to save another man nearby — the only one at that moment who still had a pulse.

“I’m thinking as horrific as this is, I have to document this because I just watched a mother and her two children get hit intentionally — because I knew it was intentional,” Addario said. “We watched it happen.”

The photo was widely shared around the world, including on the front page of The New York Times.

“We all do this work in order to have an impact, in order to affect policy, in order to educate people — to show the reality on the ground,” she said. “It’s very seldom that I know that one of my photos actually has a direct impact. I’ve been doing this 20 years and people always ask me, ‘Have your photos changed the world?’ And I never have an answer to that. ... In this case the response has been overwhelming, sadly at the expense of that mother and her two children. But I think it was such an important moment — to witness the lead-up and the actual moment.”

A mother and son rest in Lviv, Ukraine, while waiting to board a train to Poland on March 12. There were hundreds of people at the train station that day.

“Many were mothers with young children, tired, confused and numb with anguish having had their family units torn apart,” said Getty Images photographer Dan Kitwood .

To date, more than 5 million refugees have fled Ukraine.

“As a relatively new father, seeing that lady with her young son in that quiet moment struck a chord with me and left me wondering what their future might hold,” Kitwood said. “That could have been my wife, my son laying there on a cold floor in a train station with no idea what the future might hold.

“In this scene and many others, all I could do was to stand and admire the resolve, pride and stoicism on display and tell their story through my lens before returning to my family back in the UK and understanding, more than ever before, how lucky I am.”

A wounded woman, a teacher named Helena, stands outside a hospital after an attack on the eastern Ukrainian town of Chuhuiv on February 24. It was just after Russia invaded.

Aris Messinis, a photographer with Agence France-Presse, remembers how shocked many people were.

“You could see in their faces the surprise, because until that moment, they didn’t believe that the war would start,” he said.

This photo was taken two hours after the attack. “Thankfully, (Helena) survived and she was not heavily wounded,” Messinis said. “The fear in her face was still so obvious.”

In this photo taken by the Associated Press’ Emilio Morenatti, people crowd under a bridge as they try to flee across the Irpin River on the outskirts of Kyiv on March 5.

The bridge had been destroyed on purpose to prevent Russian forces from moving on to the capital, CNN’s Clarissa Ward reported.

Ward said at the time that she was “seeing a lot of people who are clearly, visibly shaken, petrified because they have been trapped in terrible bombardment for days on end and are just now starting to get out.”

The sound of constant artillery could be heard in the background.

“These people have been under bombardment for seven straight days and are only just leaving their homes,” Ward said. “And they're leaving them reluctantly, and they're leaving them with the knowledge that they might not be able to go back to them.”

As Kyiv braced for a major Russian attack, many residents hunkered down in bomb shelters, basements and subway stations.

“In the second World War, during the German bombing campaign against London, the British photographer Bill Brandt made photographs of London residents sheltering in the underground stations,” photographer Timothy Fadek said. “Brandt was always in the back of my mind, because I knew that as soon as the war began that I would need to venture into the Kyiv metro stations to make photographs for the historical record, as Brandt did.”

In this subway station that Fadek photographed on March 2, blankets and sleeping beds stretched down the corridor. Some people had tents or air mattresses. They used their phones or read books to pass the time.

“As I was leaving and about to ride the escalator up to ground level, I saw this woman reading to the children, all enchanted by illustrations in the book the story being read to them,” Fadek said. “I recognized the importance of recording this scene because the woman was not simply entertaining the children, but distracting and shielding them from the horrors of war happening above ground.”

A firefighter sprays water inside a house that was destroyed by Russian shelling in Kyiv on March 23.

“The smoke and steam were almost unbearable at times, but thankfully, no one was killed that day,” said Associated Press photographer Vadim Ghirda. “I thought the image of the lone firefighter was quite reflective of the situation in Ukraine: every person was trying to make a difference for the better, even in the face of horror.

“Moments like this showed me that any form of help can matter immensely. You don’t need to have a solution to the entire problem, but you can contribute in the best way that you can. I wish everyone could see things this way, not only in the face of atrocity.”

Emergency workers carry an injured pregnant woman outside of a bombed maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 9. The woman and her baby later died, a surgeon who was treating her confirmed.

The scene was photographed by Evgeniy Maloletka for the Associated Press.

“They rushed to take her to the ambulance while passing by the debris of buildings, smashed cars, fallen trees and destruction,” he said. “The next day this picture was everywhere, and the whole world knew about the maternity hospital.”

According to the AP, medics did not have time to get the woman’s name before her husband and father came to retrieve her body so she wouldn’t end up in one of the city’s mass graves.

“I had seen a lot of human suffering before Mariupol, but I had never seen so many children killed in one single place in such a short period of time,” Maloletka said.

Shocking images showing the bodies of civilians scattered across Bucha, Ukraine, sparked international outrage and raised the urgency of ongoing investigations into alleged Russian war crimes.

Photographer Carol Guzy remembers seeing the body bags piling up.

“It was heartbreaking,” she said. “The gravity and scale of suffering was immense as large numbers of bodies arrived daily, and (it was) difficult to convey in a still photograph. This image shows just one moment in time of so many lives lost.”

Fellow photojournalist David Hume Kennerly commented on the photo in an op-ed for The New York Times. “This image of a man with both eyes open is one of the most compelling and disquieting photos to come out of Bucha,” he wrote. “It’s an intimate and puzzling image of death, and I’ve never seen anything like it. What did this man see at the moment of his death? Whatever it was, his resolve remained.”

Guzy said it is vital that visual journalists document these scenes to “provide a window of truth amid misinformation and propaganda.”

“This one is particularly painful as the impact on non-combatants is so profound,” she said. “The photographs are hard to view, but essential. It’s much harder for the people living this nightmare every day than for anyone looking at a photo of it.”

Sviatoslav Fursin, left, and Yaryna Arieva had planned on getting married in May, but they rushed to tie the knot due to the invasion.

Their wedding ceremony was held at the St. Michael's Cathedral in Kyiv on February 24, the day Russia invaded.

"The situation is hard. We are going to fight for our land,” Arieva told CNN. “We maybe can die, and we just wanted to be together before all of that.”

CNN’s Christian Streib said the scene almost felt surreal.

“Here I was, witnessing love, happiness and togetherness in this beautiful, peaceful environment … while outside the monastery, Ukraine was about to enter one of the darkest chapters of its history,” he said.

After their wedding, the young couple prepared to go to the local Territorial Defense Center to join efforts to help defend the country.

"We have to protect it,” Arieva said. “We have to protect the people we love and the land we live on. I hope for the best, but I do what I can to protect my land.”

The lifeless body of a 6-year-old girl lies on a medical cart at a hospital in Mariupol. A ccording to the Associated Press, she was killed by Russian shelling in a residential area.

A series of photos, taken by Evgeniy Maloletka for the AP, show the scene when she arrived at the hospital on February 27. Her mother wept outside the ambulance. Her father was at her side, covered in blood.

A medical team placed the girl onto a gurney and wheeled her inside, where doctors and nurses fought to revive her.

But she could not be saved.

A doctor looked into the camera of an AP videojournalist in the room.

“Show this to Putin,” he said. “The eyes of this child, and crying doctors.”

A Ukrainian soldier carries a baby across a destroyed bridge in Irpin on March 3.

This was the bridge in Irpin that had been destroyed on purpose to prevent Russian forces from invading.

“At one moment during the evacuation, a couple was struggling to carry their belongings and their newborn baby,” said photographer Timothy Fadek, who was on assignment for CNN. “This soldier, Oleh, offered them help, so they handed him their baby.

“When I look at this photograph and think about that day, I am still in awe at the calm, kindness and bravery of the civilians and soldiers alike in the midst of this horrible and needless war.”

Ilona Koval, a woman who is the choreographer for Ukraine’s national figure skating team, weeps March 1 as she travels in Palanca, Moldova, with her daughter and a family friend. They were at a temporary refugee camp on the Ukrainian border.

“I remembered an immense rush and chaos at this time,” photographer Laetitia Vancon said. “People crossing the borders were in shock. The shock of the war, the shock of having to leave so suddenly everything behind, the shock of having no future perspectives but fears.”

Marcus Yam remembers seeing an airstrike hit a building in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on March 25.

“A flash of light. A mushroom cloud. Then the flames,” he said. “There were local residents, like this gentleman, walking by unfazed, trying to get their aid supplies home. Gasoline was limited and not everyone had cars.”

The Los Angeles Times photographer said covering the war has been difficult and unpredictable.

“Access is difficult, verifying information is difficult, security and safety became tough to manage to maintain,” he said. “It becomes even more difficult when survival comes down to just plain dumb luck.”

Yam was recently awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the US departure from Afghanistan.

“Events happen in a series of burst-moments, and oftentimes we don’t have time to think about much except follow our gut reaction and instincts when we are in the field,” he said. “Our moral compass is often tested when confronted with these tough scenes — and we often forget that we are human first, before we are journalists.”

People pay their respects during a funeral service for three Ukrainian soldiers in Lviv on March 11.

Senior Soldier Andrii Stefanyshyn, 39; Senior Lt. Taras Didukh, 25; and Sgt. Dmytro Kabakov, 58, were laid to rest at the Saints Peter and Paul Garrison Church.

Even in this sacred space, the sounds of war intruded: an air raid siren audible under the sound of prayer and weeping. Yet no one stirred, according to CNN’s Atika Shubert. Residents were inured to the near-daily warnings of an air attack.

“I remember the cold air and the frozen and pale faces of young soldiers,” photographer Valeria Ferraro said. “There was dignity on their faces while standing next to coffins, but some of them also communicated a sense of estrangement, so I was wondering how the death of their comrades affected them. On the other side, there were relatives of those who died. That was a side of pure pain and despair.”

Ukrainian soldiers take cover from incoming artillery fire in Irpin on March 13.

“As we were heading out of Irpin, things heated up and the sound of incoming shelling became closer and more frequent,” Associated Press photographer Felipe Dana said. “We saw a couple of soldiers running for shelter so we followed them. It looked like a safe place. We ended up spending the next hour there as the bombardment kept coming, until it felt like a safe moment to leave.”

Moments after taking this picture, Dana learned that American journalist Brent Renaud had been killed in Irpin that day.

“I returned weeks later, only after Russian troops withdrew from the region,” Dana said. “I saw a very different city — destroyed and with dozens of bodies left on the streets of Irpin and Bucha.”

Kiseleva Larisa Anatolyevna hadn't left her apartment in 13 years, according to photographer Laurel Chor. But with the sound of shelling constantly rattling her windows in Kharkiv, Ukraine, it was time to go somewhere safe where she could receive care.

Volunteers from a humanitarian aid center helped the 55-year-old, who has multiple sclerosis, evacuate her home on April 19.

“The friends and social workers who took care of her had either fled, or it was too dangerous for them to go to her flat,” Chor said.

Chor said countless humanitarian aid centers have sprung up all over the country to help those in need. These volunteers also packed up Anatolyevna’s belongings and her cat and carried her into a van, where she was taken to a train station.

“She said it was scary to live under constant shelling,” Chor said. “The night the war began, she said even her cat — who usually refuses to sleep in her bed — was afraid and crawled in with her that night.”

The body of a Russian soldier lies next to a Russian vehicle outside Kharkiv on February 25.

This photo was taken by Tyler Hicks of The New York Times just a day after the start of the invasion, which Russian President Vladimir Putin called a “special military operation.”

Accurate reporting has been difficult to find on the Russian side of the war, as many independent media outlets have been shuttered by the Kremlin. A censorship law makes it a crime to disseminate what the Russian government considers to be “fake” information.

Most media outlets in Russia have followed state orders to toe Putin’s line — for example, by not calling the invasion an invasion.

Russia has also clamped down on social media inside the country.

Motria Oleksiienko, 99, is comforted by her daughter-in-law, Tetiana Oleksiienko, in the village of Andriivka, Ukraine, on April 6.

Andriivka was heavily affected by fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces. Several buildings in the village were reduced to mounds of bricks and corrugated metal, and residents were struggling without heat, electricity or cooking gas.

Motria Oleksiienko was immobilized in a bed in a very cold room in her home, according to Associated Press photographer Vadim Ghirda. She had to be carried out with help from neighbors when Russian troops commandeered their home.

“She was terrified by the sound of unfamiliar voices, especially men’s voices,” Ghirda said. “It was truly heartbreaking to see the horror in her eyes.”

Marina Yatsko runs behind her boyfriend, Fedor, as they arrive at the hospital with her 18-month-old son, Kirill, who was wounded by shelling in Mariupol on March 4.

Photographer Evgeniy Maloletka captured the scene as medical workers frantically tried to save the boy's life. But he didn't survive.

“It was important for me to show to the country and to the world the suffering, fear and pain of the Ukrainians,” Maloletka said. “I often ask myself: ‘Why? Why? Why?’ — the same question Marina Yatsko asked with tears in her eyes while touching the fingers of her son.”

Ukrainian officials accused Russia of shelling the city and civilian corridors out of it, despite Russia's own agreement to hold fire. Western officials had started to notice a shift in Russian strategy with increasing attacks on civilians and residential areas.

People take shelter inside a subway car in Kharkiv as the Russian invasion began on February 24.

“The invasion kicked off with a series of airstrikes, and one of the things I quickly learned was that the subways can be used a bomb shelters,” photographer Marcus Yam said.

“I have never seen anything like it. People resting in subway cars, sleeping on floors, standing in the darkness. It felt like in any other day this could be rush hour in Manhattan on a poorly lit train. But then there were the echoes of explosions and a certain wave of anxiety on everyone’s faces.”

Yam said everyone seemed to be on edge and exhausted.

“But what struck me was how calm everyone was, and how much deference and comfort they offered each other,” he said. “In these times of crisis, what I found was humanity coming across.”

In the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion, there was a national directive in Ukraine to complicate the efforts of the Russian army.

“I had heard that road signs were being removed, covered, or painted over in order to prevent invading Russian troops from easily orienting themselves, and as I was driving I saw a municipal worker in the process of removing this sign pointing the way to a nearby village,” photographer Brendan Hoffman said. “I simply pulled the car over and darted across the highway to photograph the process, which took only a minute. …

“For me, it goes a long way to showing the complete reorientation of society, which turned on a dime to resist the invasion in every way possible.”

The man was fine with Hoffman taking the picture. But he wasn’t in the mood to chat.

“He had a job to do, and as soon as he tossed the sign in the back of his van he sped off to the next one,” Hoffman said.

Paula Bronstein was photographing the destruction in Borodianka, Ukraine, on April 9 when it started to rain.

“I thought, wow, if the sun comes back there might be a rainbow,” she said. “I stayed after 7 p.m. even though it was problematic with the 8 p.m. curfew getting back to Kyiv, and the rainbow happened.”

She got back to her base in the Ukrainian capital well after curfew.

“It was tough to get past the checkpoints, but well worth it,” she said.

Ukraine Under Attack: Documenting the Russian Invasion

Photographers in and around Ukraine have captured the horrors of war.

Maryna mourning her son Oleksiy Lytvynov in Boryspil, near Kyiv, on Feb. 19. Credit... Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times

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By The New York Times

• Published Oct. 11, 2022 Updated July 24, 2023

In snow-shrouded ruins where families once lived, muddy trenches and fields where farmers once toiled and dark city streets where missile strikes have knocked out the power, the evidence of Russia’s invasion is everywhere.

In the 12 months since Russian troops marched across Ukraine’s borders, the two countries’ forces have fought across hundreds of miles, in storms and baking sun, in sinking temperatures and all while artillery shells and missiles fell up and down the front.

Those strikes have also fallen on towns and cities, inflicting a horrific toll on Ukrainian civilians, tens of thousands of whom are believed to have been killed. And although Ukraine executed two largely successful counteroffensives in the fall — forcing Russia to retreat from hundreds of square miles in the northeast and the south — the pace of fighting has slowed to a vicious battle of attrition, largely over eastern territory.

In a draft, Russia mobilized hundreds of thousands of men to shore up its defenses, compensate for heavy losses and hurl waves of troops at Ukrainian positions. In talks with its European and American supporters, Ukraine has received promises of tanks, air defenses and Western training for its troops.

Both Russia and Ukraine are expected to launch offensives in the spring: one to seize more of the eastern Donbas region, the other to claw back territory from the occupying Russians.

But even if fighting remains most intense in the east, the war pervades life everywhere.

Russian strikes have hit the capital, Kyiv, and the central city of Dnipro. Artillery has flattened towns and sent millions of civilians fleeing to safer cities in Ukraine’s west or across its borders. In the towns where Russian forces have fled, Ukrainians have documented evidence of killings and other atrocities.

For a year, photographers with The New York Times and other news organizations throughout Ukraine have chronicled the ordeal of war.

This gallery contains graphic images.

President Biden and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in front of St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery in Kyiv on Feb. 20.

Soldiers with the Ukrainian armed forces fire a howitzer at Russian troops from a position in the Donbas Region of eastern Ukraine, on Feb. 14.

A mortar team with Carpathian Sich, a Ukrainian battalion consisting of volunteers, provides fire support against a pressing Russian offensive on the front line in the area of Kreminna, in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, on Feb. 12.

Anna Hayko, 35, and her 4-year-old son, Vladislav, take shelter during an air raid alarm in a subway station in Kyiv, on Feb. 10.

Anti-tank obstacles, left over from the early days of the invasion when Russian forces closed in on Kyiv, in the city on Feb. 9.

Emergency workers putting out a fire minutes after a missile strike in the center of Kramatorsk, in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, on Feb. 2.

Volunteers with the Ukrainian organization Vostok-SOS preparing to evacuate Alla Zhytchenko, 72, from her home in Kherson, on Feb. 1.

Lyudmila Degtyaryova standing in the destroyed remnants of her home in the frontline village of Nevske near Kremmina as Russian forces battle Ukrainian troops, in Luhansk, in eastern Ukraine, on Feb. 4.

The carcass of a dead cow in front of a home in the village of Makiivka, which is along the eastern frontline near Kremmina, as Russian forces push to take back ground they lost last autumn from Ukrainian troops, in Luhansk, Ukraine, on Feb. 4.

Piles of protective sandbags in the historic Podil neighborhood of Kyiv, Feb. 5.

Nina Kovalenko, 66, crying over the body of her son, Mykhailo Kovalenko, 36, who was killed in a strike shortly before, in Konstantinovka, in eastern Ukraine, on Jan. 28.

Several hundred people lining up to receive bread and canned food at a humanitarian distribution center in Kherson, on Jan. 30.

Karyna Pashunova, left, retrieving belongings from the attic of her mother’s house, which was damaged when a Russian missile landed just outside, on Jan. 26.

Ukrainian soldiers in a trench, where a unit of the Karlson Battalion were dug in to monitor Russian positions, in the Zaporizhzhia region, on Jan. 30.

Ukrainian soldiers with the border guard cooking and smoking in a kitchen bunker near the front line in eastern Ukraine, Jan, 27.

Civilians registering to receive humanitarian aid in Kherson on Jan. 28.

A gate in a destroyed village in the Kherson region on Jan. 23, with graffiti reading: “Welcome to hell.”

A woman crying over the bodies of her son and grandson moments after they were recovered from the rubble of the Russian attack on the Dnipro apartment building.

Graves for soldiers, dug in advance, in the military section of a cemetery in Dnipro on Jan. 18.

Olena Bubenko, 57, with her granddaughter, Nicole, 7, feeding dogs in the mostly abandoned village of Ruski Tyshky, north of Kharkiv, on Jan. 22. She now feeds about 90 dogs, more than half of them inherited when people fled the village during heavy fighting.

Friends, relatives and students of the boxing coach Mykhaylo Korenovsky, 40, attending a memorial service on Jan. 17, three days after he was killed in the Russian missile strike in Dnipro.

The city of Kharkiv under blackout conditions on Jan. 20.

Rescue workers looking for survivors after the missile strike on the apartment building in Dnipro.

Olga Afanasieva, 49, recovering in the hospital after sustaining serious injuries in a Russian missile attack on his apartment building in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Jan. 14.

Oleh Valovyi, 50, recovering in the hospital after sustaining serious injuries in a Russian missile attack on his apartment building in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Jan. 14.

Comrades of the Ukrainian soldier, Volodymyr Kerbut, 46, riding on a bus with his body, to the cemetery, from the Church of Andrew the First, in Bucha, Ukraine, on Jan. 12.

The recovered bodies of five people killed in a large missile strike on a residential building, lying outside the wreckage a day after the attack, in Dnipro, on Jan. 15.

Residents watching rescuers look for missing people after a missile hit a large residential building in Dnipro, on Jan. 14.

A woman walking past a defensive trench from the early days of the Russian invasion, in Kyiv Jan. 11.

Ukrainian troops firing a mortar round toward Russian positions in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine on Jan. 1.

Destroyed shops in Bakhmut on Jan 2. The city in eastern Ukraine has been heavily contested for months.

A woman and two dogs lying dead in the doorway of a building in Bakhmut on Jan. 2. The woman was believed to have been killed when a rocket struck a nearby shopping center 15 minutes earlier.

Ukrainian artillery troops near the eastern city of Kreminna unloading shells and primers for a cannon on Dec. 31.

Carrying the coffin of a 20-year-old soldier, Vladyslav Chernyakov, at his funeral in Bucha, near Kyiv, on Dec. 30. He was killed while fighting in the Donetsk region.

Families watching a movie in a parking garage on Dec. 24 in Kyiv.

Ukrainian forces firing a howitzer in the Donetsk region on Dec. 20.

A Ukrainian soldier at a church that was shelled and looted by the Russian military during its occupation, in Lyman, a city in the Donetsk region, on Dec. 25.

A woman with bandaged shrapnel wounds waiting for paramedics to take her to the hospital in Kherson on Dec. 18.

Ukrainian soldiers and civilians collecting water in a district of Kyiv on Dec. 16.

A woman walking through the battleground city of Bakhmut, in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, amid bombings on Dec. 13.

The Ukrainian military digging trenches in the frontline city of Bakhmut on Dec. 16.

Family members grieving at the funeral of a 78-year-old retiree in Kherson, in southern Ukraine, on Dec. 17.

Demonstrating how to handle an injury during a first-aid training session for civilians in Kyiv, the capital, on Dec. 18.

Arriving for Sunday morning church service in Kherson on Dec. 18.

An explosion illuminating the sky as a small surveillance team for the Ukrainian Army scanned the horizon over Bakhmut on Dec. 9.

Iryna and Viktor Dudnyk weeping over the body of their son Dmytro, 38, killed in a Russian rocket attack in Kherson, on Dec. 10.

Ukrainian soldiers from the 63rd brigade who were fighting in Kherson region pulling back to fix their vehicles on Dec. 9.

Wolf, a 29-year-old former U.S. Marine and the leader of a small unit of Ukraine-allied foreign soldiers fighting in the country’s eastern front, near Bakhmut on Dec. 9.

Yulia and Ihor holding hands after boarding a designated evacuation train leaving Kherson for the city of Khmelnytskyi on Dec. 8.

Residents of Kherson lining up at the glass doorway of a food and aid distribution center set up in the basement of a tattoo shop on Dec. 8.

Residents carrying water and supplies on Dec. 9 amid the destruction in the village of Posad-Pokrovske, which was evacuated at the start of the war.

Visiting the grave in December of a father who was killed in Bucha, Ukraine, earlier in the year.

Sheltering in a train station as air-raid sirens sounded in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, on Dec. 5.

Salvaging a refrigerator from the ruins of a home in the southern village of Posad-Pokrovske on Dec. 3.

Downed power lines on a shelled road in the southern village of Posad-Pokrovske on Dec. 3.

A Ukrainian cannon firing toward a Russian ammunition depot across the Dnipro River in the southern region of Kherson on Dec. 1.

Abandoned Russian military vehicles by the roadside in the Kherson region on Dec. 1.

Ukrainian soldiers in Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine, on Nov. 25.

Two residents, left, helping to exhume the bodies of six men from a communal grave as war crimes investigators looked on in the southern Ukrainian village of Pravdyne on Nov. 28.

A burning oil depot on the Dnipro River in Kherson on Nov. 19.

A Ukrainian special forces unit pushing their boats into the Dnipro River on Nov. 5 for a night operation targeting Russian forces behind the front line.

A military hospital in Bakhmut, in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, on Nov. 25.

Crowds gathering for food handouts in Kherson on Nov. 15.

The Antonivskiy Bridge in Kherson on Nov. 16. The bridge was damaged by retreating Russian forces.

Celebrating in the newly liberated city of Kherson on Nov. 12.

Students at a military boarding school in Kyiv participating in a ceremony awarding epaulets to young cadets on Nov. 18.

Ukrainian soldiers in a bunker preparing for an operation in Bakhmut on Nov. 5.

Apartments illuminated with improvised electricity sources during a rolling blackout across Kyiv on Nov. 8.

Charging phones and making calls using the electricity and satellite service set up at the train station in Kherson City on Nov. 19.

Salvaging belongings on Nov. 24 from a residential building that had been struck by a Russian missile the previous day.

Residents on Nov. 29 helping police and war crimes investigators exhume the body of a teenage girl who was said to have been executed by Russian forces in Pravdyne.

A cemetery in Irpin, a Kyiv suburb, on Nov. 30.

A member of the Ukrainian armed forces who had sustained a head wound in a motor vehicle accident receiving treatment at a military health clinic in the Dnipro region of eastern Ukraine on Oct. 16.

The bodies of Russian soldiers lying on the side of a road outside Lyman, eastern Ukraine, on Oct. 2, the day after Ukrainian forces retook the town.

Injured civilians in Kyiv on Oct. 10.

Crews working to extinguish fires and search for missing people on Oct. 10 after a missile hit a residential building in Zaporizhzhia, southeastern Ukraine.

Sereda Snizhana, 28, with her 2-year-old, Artem, and her 4-year-old, Ilona, at their home in Dudchany, southern Ukraine, on Oct. 8.

Oleksandr Avdeev, 60, watching on Oct. 13 as workers in Borova, eastern Ukraine, exhumed the body of his 33-year-old son, Serhii, who had been abducted and killed by Russian forces.

Waiting in line to receive free bread provided by the United Nations near buildings that were damaged in airstrikes in Chernihiv, northern Ukraine, on Oct. 19.

A photograph taken on a government-arranged news tour showing a resident on Oct. 3 in the courtyard of the severely damaged Zymnensky Female Monastery in Sviatohirsk, eastern Ukraine, where she had taken shelter.

In a photograph taken on a government-arranged news tour, abandoned Russian military vehicles and rocket launchers, ruined and rusting, lying in Sviatohirsk on Oct. 3.

A Ukrainian servicewoman waiting while a fellow soldier of the same regiment was treated for his wounds at a military field hospital in the Zaporizhzhia region on Oct. 1.

Dusk over the Podil neighborhood of Kyiv, along the Dnipro River, on Oct. 28.

Mourning in eastern Ukraine on Oct. 18 at the funeral of a 42-year-old Ukrainian soldier who was killed by shrapnel during fighting.

Maryna Ponomariova, 6, who lost her left leg because of Russian shelling, doing physical therapy at a children’s hospital in Kyiv on Oct. 20.

A Ukrainian special forces unit on the Dnipro River in Southern Ukraine on Oct. 22 returning after a night operation behind the front line.

A burial site near Izium, Ukraine, on Sept. 23 that Ukrainian officials said could hold the remains of more than 400 people.

Ukrainian soldiers at an entrenched position near the Kherson front on Sept. 15.

The letter “Z,” a pro-war symbol, in a kindergarten classroom in a village near Izium on Sept. 18.

Residents crossing a damaged bridge amid the sounds of shelling in Bakhmut, Ukraine, on Sept. 28.

A husband and wife in a temporary housing facility for internally displaced people in Kharkiv on Sept. 25.

Teaching math to first graders in Irpin on Sept. 1, the first day of school.

Markings on a wall in Izium on Sept. 18 counting the days of an inmate’s imprisonment in the basement cell of a police station that had been taken over by Russian forces.

Volunteers sweeping through buildings, including residences, to evacuate Ukrainian civilians from the frontline city of Siversk, in the Donetsk region, on Sept. 20.

Ukrainian soldiers with Aleksandr, 69, whom they said they suspected of spying for Russia, in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine on Sept. 27.

Investigators on Sept. 16 at a site in Izium where officials said 445 individual graves and one mass grave had been discovered.

An artillery unit from Ukraine’s 58th Brigade near the town of Bakhmut firing toward an advancing Russian infantry unit around the town of Pokrovske, on Aug. 10.

Semyon, 27, taking his first steps on his new prosthetic leg on Aug. 26. Semyon, a Ukrainian soldier, lost his leg in a mortar barrage in the Kharkiv region.

The debris of a church on Aug. 11 after an attack in the Mykolaiv region.

Three girls and their grandmother waiting inside their car in a convoy leaving Russian-occupied territory on their way to a Ukrainian-controlled crossing into the city of Zaporizhzhia on Aug. 14.

Family members of a soldier who was killed on the front line visiting his grave in Lviv, in western Ukraine, on Aug. 24, the country’s Independence Day.

A Ukrainian serviceman on Aug. 11 walking through a school in the Mykolaiv region that had been struck by a bomb.

Delivering a baby born to a Ukrainian surrogate mother in a maternity hospital in Kyiv on Aug. 19.

A Ukrainian boy looking at a damaged apartment building in eastern Ukraine on Aug. 5 after rockets struck the area.

A Ukrainian soldier on a step leading to a system of frontline trenches facing Russian forces near the Ukrainian town of Barvinkove on Aug. 1.

Residents at a funeral on Aug. 1 for Andriy Mishchenko, a soldier who had fought with the Azov Regiment, a Ukrainian nationalist group, in Baryshivka, in north-central Ukraine.

Damage after an attack at the Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University in Mykolaiv on Aug. 17.

Working to extinguish a fire at a dermatology clinic after a strike in Mykolaiv on Aug. 1.

A man wounded after a missile struck near his home in Kramatorsk, in eastern Ukraine, on July 7.

A house engulfed in flames after multiple rockets hit a residential area in Bakhmut on July 10.

Hennady Kononenko, 74, and his wife Nina, 76, outside their damaged home after it was hit by shelling in Sloviansk, in the Donetsk region, on July 5.

In front of a destroyed housing block in Hostomel, a suburb of Kyiv, on July 7.

The ruins of houses destroyed by Russian shelling in Moschun, a village near Kyiv, on July 7.

Members of the Azov Regiment near the front lines in the Zaporizhzhia region, eastern Ukraine, on July 21. The regiment began as a far-right militia, and Russian propagandists have pointed to it as evidence to support their unfounded claims about the influence of Nazism in Ukraine.

At the site of a missile strike in Dnipro, one of Ukraine’s most populous cities, on July 15.

Neighbors trying to extinguish a fire in a residential area of Bakhmut, minutes after multiple rockets struck there on July 10.

A girl looking at ammunition on display during a mine safety lesson in Kyiv on July 26.

Residents in Mykolaiv on July 22 collecting water brought in daily from Odesa after Russian forces severed some pipes.

A Ukrainian man from Pokrovsk on a train that was evacuating people from the area on July 31.

Children napping on July 25 at a center in Kyiv that provides services for young people.

A Ukrainian Army medical unit giving aid on June 29 to a soldier who had been injured by a strike at the front line in the Donetsk region.

Ukrainian soldiers at the scene of a missile strike on what appeared to be a military depot in the eastern town of Druzhkivka on June 20.

Miners at the start of a shift in the Donetsk region on June 8.

A man in Mykolaiv on June 20 recovering from multiple injuries sustained during an explosion.

Police officers and forensic investigators on June 13 exhuming the bodies of men believed to be civilians who were killed by Russian forces in March near Vorzel, in the Kyiv region.

Oleh Turash on June 8, revisiting the basement of a school in Yahidne, in northern Ukraine, where he was held with over 300 villagers by Russian forces in March.

Mass in Odesa on June 23.

Doctors and nurses working to stabilize a Ukrainian soldier who had been wounded in the leg and torso by shrapnel from a Russian artillery strike near Izium, at a hospital in Sloviansk, on June 1.

A U.S.-supplied weapon firing at Russian positions in the Donetsk region on June 21.

Residents evacuating Lysychansk, in eastern Ukraine, on June 13.

School graduates dancing in front of the opera and ballet theater in Odesa on June 15.

An unexploded Russian rocket in Lysychansk on June 8.

A Ukrainian soldier at a mass grave in the hills above the city of Lysychansk, in eastern Ukraine, on June 16.

Praying and singing at the funeral for Artemiy Dymyd, a soldier, at the Lychakiv cemetery in Lviv, western Ukraine, on June 21.

Balloons for sale in the center of Lviv on June 26.

The family of Yurii Huk, 41, outside SS. Peter and Paul Garrison Church in Lviv during his funeral on May 16. He died during an artillery bombardment in eastern Ukraine on May 9.

Ukrainian troops firing artillery at Russian positions in the Donetsk region on May 22.

Destroyed vehicles at a complex bombed by Russian forces on May 23 in the frontline town of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region.

Volunteers from Britain and Ukraine working with the aid organization Vostok-SOS carrying Zinaida Riabtseva, who is 77 and blind, down five flights of stairs during a May 30 evacuation in Bakhmut.

Ukrainian soldiers loading onto an armored vehicle as they head toward the front near the city of Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region on May 25.

Mykola Telegin clearing debris in his daughter’s apartment after a Russian strike hit a residential area in Sloviansk on May 31.

The body of a Russian soldier on May 19 outside the destroyed school in Vilkhivka, a village that had been occupied for weeks by Russian forces.

An overturned car in front of a house in the Saltivka neighborhood of Kharkiv, Ukraine, on May 27.

Ukrainian artillery personnel in the Donetsk region on May 22.

Emergency workers removing the remains of four Russian soldiers after a strike by Ukrainian artillery on their position in the previously occupied village of Malaya Rohan outside the city of Kharkiv on May 18.

Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv, in ruins on May 2 after weeks of fierce fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces.

A Ukrainian sniper putting a suppressor on his rifle at a small base in the eastern Ukrainian town of Barvinkove in the Kharkiv region on May 22.

Friends and family members mourning Yurii Kaniuk, 27, at his home in the Lviv region. On May 23, not far from the village of Yakovlivka, in the Donetsk region, he was shot while on a special investigative assignment.

A Ukrainian soldier trying to salvage an abandoned heavy machine gun from an abandoned Russian tank on May 25 in the Siversky Donets River. The failed river crossing that took place at the spot over several days in early May was one of the most lethal engagements of the war for the Russian Army.

The twin sisters Nika and Miya, 3, on May 8 surveying vehicles destroyed in the war near Irpin.

Tatyana Petrovna, 72, in the garden of a home in Bucha where the bodies of three civilians lay on April 4.

Exhuming bodies from a mass grave in Bucha on April 8.

Russian rocket damage in a neighborhood in central Kharkiv on April 17.

Vasyl Kuprienko walking through his flooded street toward his home in the town of Demydiv, near Kyiv, on April 24. The town was flooded after Ukraine made the tactical decision to release waters from a hydroelectric dam between the Irpin River and the Kyiv Reservoir to block the Russian military advance.

Bodies in Bucha on April 6, after Russian forces retreated.

Ukrainian soldiers attempting to salvage parts from a destroyed Russian armored vehicle in the recently liberated town of Bucha on April 3.

A classroom on April 4 at a school that was used as a base for Russian troops in Bucha.

Maksim Syroizhko, a Ukrainian soldier, with his girlfriend, Yana Matvapaeva, on April 21 in Kyiv. The couple said that they had been together for the past five years but, until that day, had not seen each other since the war began.

A monument to those killed in the World Wars, damaged from shrapnel blasts, in the Kyiv suburb of Horenka on April 16.

Volodymir Naumets, 10, attending the funeral of his mother, Maryna, 33, at a cemetery in Bucha with his stepfather, Ivan Drahun, 40, on the outskirts of Kyiv on April 20.

A hand protruding from a mass grave in Bucha on April 3.

The body of a civilian, reportedly killed by Russian forces, on the street in Bucha on April 2.

Ukrainian soldier Hlib Kihitov, 21, paying his final respects to his twin brother, Ehor Kihitov, 21, who was killed along with nearly two dozen of his fellow soldiers in an artillery strike in Popasna in the eastern Luhansk region, during his funeral in the western city of Lviv, on April 26.

A snow-dusted loaf of bread on a bench next to pooled blood in a park where local residents said at least two people were killed by mortar fire on April 4.

Vasyl, probably killed as he worked on a power pylon when a Russian cluster munition detonated on a street in Babai, a Kharkiv suburb, in April.

A Russian sign left behind on the wall of Valriy Tymchuk’s home in Lypivka, Ukraine, on April 15.

Family members mourning Oleksandr Pokhodenko and Mykola Pysariv on April 26 in Zmiiv, Ukraine.

The bodies of four older people at a nursing home in Bucha on April 7. The coroner, after a brief examination, said that they and others found dead at the nursing home could have died of hunger.

Iryna Abramova at the grave of her husband, Oleh Abramov, on April 26. He was killed by Russian forces outside their home in Bucha.

A retired teacher known as Auntie Lyuda was killed on March 5. Her dog was still waiting outside her home more than a month later.

Four freshly dug graves, for an early-morning funeral, at a cemetery in Irpin on April 16.

Residents of Bucha, a town retaken by Ukraine, reaching for food distributed by Ukrainian soldiers on April 2.

The body of a civilian covered by a plastic sheet near Bucha on April 3.

Dozens of vehicles and some people on foot, clinging to their belongings, streaming into Kharkiv on April 29, fleeing fighting in a town to the north.

A neighbor unfurling a blanket on April 8 as police investigators examined the body of a woman found in a potato cellar at the back of a house in Bucha. The woman had a gunshot wound to the head and had been covered in a fur coat, though she was naked underneath.

A basement in a children’s sanitarium in Bucha on April 9, with congealed blood on the wall and ground, and bullet marks also visible on the wall. After the area was liberated, the bodies of five people were found in the building with their hands bound.

Ukrainian soldiers trying to save a mortally wounded man moments after a group of civilians was hit by a mortar in Irpin on March 6.

A Russian missile hit barracks in Mykolaiv used by airborne troops of the Ukrainian Army. Several soldiers were killed in the attack, which took off the facade of the building, leaving gray steel bunk beds visible from the front courtyard on March 8.

Ukrainian soldiers waiting to advance during an operation to clear out remaining Russian forces in Irpin on March 29.

Civilians being evacuated across the Irpin River into Kyiv on March 8.

Firefighters on March 8 extinguishing a blaze in a vegetable storage building in Mykolaiv that was struck by Russian missiles.

Ilona Koval, center, choreographer for the Ukrainian national figure skating team, fleeing Ukraine with her daughter, left, and others on March 1.

Taria, 27, in a tent where she was living with her two children, and other Ukrainian families in a subway station on March 2. Many of them had been there for about a week as Russian and Ukrainian forces fought on the outskirts of Kyiv.

A Ukrainian mother and her newborn in a maternity ward in the basement of a hospital in Kyiv on March 2.

Boarding an evacuation train in Odesa on March 15.

Emergency employees and volunteers carrying an injured pregnant woman from a maternity hospital damaged by Russian shelling in Mariupol on March 9. She was reported to have later died.

The morgue in Mykolaiv on March 12. Casualties, both military and civilian, accumulated so fast that the authorities could barely keep pace, with bodies stacked side by side or on top of one another, covered in sheets or carpets, if at all.

A soldier from a unit of Ukrainian and foreign fighters conducting an operation in Irpin on March 29.

Anzhelika Verveyko, center, at the funeral on March 6 for her husband, a sergeant who was killed in an artillery strike on his position north of Kyiv on Feb. 27.

A Ukrainian volunteer fighter outside the civilian airport in Mykolaiv on March 10.

The body of a Russian soldier in Kharkiv on Feb. 25 next to an armored vehicle that Ukrainian soldiers said was Russian.

A residential building in Kyiv on Feb. 25 after it was hit by missiles.

Julia, a teacher and a volunteer, waiting to be deployed to fight Russian troops around Kyiv on Feb. 26.

Volunteers filling sand bags in Kropyvnytskyi, southern Ukraine, on Feb. 27, in an effort to fortify the city’s defenses.

Covering a body after bombings in Chuhuiv, eastern Ukraine, on Feb. 24.

Damage from Russian attacks on radar arrays and other equipment at a Ukrainian military site outside Mariupol on Feb. 24.

Lining up at a long-distance bus station in the center of Kyiv on Feb. 24.

The Ukrainian flag at a checkpoint near the village of Hushchyntsi, central Ukraine, on Feb. 25.

Military volunteers receiving weapons in Fastiv, in the Kyiv region, on Feb. 25.

Sunday service at St. Paraskeva Orthodox Church in Kalynivka, Ukraine, on Feb. 27.

Dusk in Kyiv on Feb. 24 as Russian forces advanced on the city.

Our Coverage of the War in Ukraine

News and Analysis

The authorities in Poland and Germany have arrested at least five of their citizens  and accused them of spying for Russia or of offering to help Moscow commit violence on European soil, including a “possible attack” on the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky.

The drone combat in Ukraine that is transforming modern warfare has begun taking a deadly toll on one of the most powerful symbols  of American military might — the tank — and threatening to rewrite how it will be used in future conflicts.

At least 17 people were killed and scores more injured when three Russian missiles struck a busy downtown district of Chernihiv , north of Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said.

Resuming U.S. Military Aid: Much-needed munitions like artillery shells could start arriving relatively quickly , but experts say it could take weeks before U.S. assistance has a direct impact on the war . What would $60 billion buy ?

A Race to Hold the Line: The days of lightning battlefield breakthroughs  may be over. With Russia preparing to make a big push, the Ukrainians can do little but dig in.

Life in Ukrainian Villages: Russian assaults have all but destroyed the factories and plants that were the economic lifeblood  of the towns and cities in Ukraine’s east.

How We Verify Our Reporting

Our team of visual journalists analyzes satellite images, photographs , videos and radio transmissions  to independently confirm troop movements and other details.

We monitor and authenticate reports on social media, corroborating these with eyewitness accounts and interviews. Read more about our reporting efforts .

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The Pictures that Defined World War II

By: Madison Horne

Updated: August 8, 2023 | Original: July 6, 2018

Getting the perfect shot in wartime is not only about weapons. With over 30 countries involved in World War II and the loss of over 50 million lives, war photography captured the destruction and victories of the deadliest war in history.

Led by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, over one million German troops invaded Poland on September 1, 1939 . Just two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany—and the world was once again at war. Photographers were there every step of the way to capture the heroic triumphs and devastating losses.

Here is a look at some of the most poignant moments captured.

'Miracle of Dunkirk'

After German soldiers swept through Belgium and Northern France in a blitzkrieg in May of 1940, all communication and transport between Allied forces were cut, leaving thousands of troops stranded. Operation Dynamo was quickly put in place to evacuate the Allies stuck along the beaches of Dunkirk, France. Soldiers waded through the water hoping to escape by rescue vessels, military ships, or civilian ships. More than 338,000 soldiers were saved during what would be later called, the “Miracle of Dunkirk.”

Pearl Harbor

On December 7, 1941, the U.S. naval base Pearl Harbor was the scene of a devastating surprise attack by Japanese forces. Japanese fighter planes destroyed nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight battleships, and over 300 airplanes. More than 2,400 Americans (including civilians) died in the attack, with another 1,000 Americans wounded.

This event was the tipping point for the U.S. The next day, December 8, 1941, Congress approved Roosevelt’s declaration of war on Japan. Two years after its bloody start, the U.S. had officially entered World War II.

Just three days later, Japan’s allies, Germany and Italy, declared war against the United States, which Congress reciprocated by declaring war on the European powers. The world was once again at war.

Women in the Workforce

With the United States now involved in the war, men were joining the fight by the millions. Women stepped in to fill the empty civilian and military jobs once only seen as jobs for men. They replaced men in assembly lines, factories and defense plants, leading to iconic images like Rosie the Riveter that inspired strength, patriotism and liberation for women.

Women also took part in the war effort abroad, even taking on leading roles behind the camera. This photograph was taken by photojournalist  Margaret Bourke-White , one of the first four photographers hired for Life Magazine. She later became the first female war correspondent and the first woman to be allowed to work in combat zones during the war.

Tuskegee Airmen

This photograph, taken in 1942 by Life Magazine photographer Gabriel Benzur, shows Cadets in training for the U.S. Army Air Corps, who would later become the famous Tuskegee Airmen . The Tuskegee Airmen were the first Black military aviators and helped encourage the eventual integration of the U.S. armed forces.

With racial segregation still remaining in U.S. armed forces during this time, it was believed that Black soldiers were incapable of learning to fly and operate military aircraft. As the U.S. involvement in World War II increased, however, civilian pilot training programs expanded across the country forcing inclusion.  

The Warsaw Ghettos

After Hitler’s invasion of Poland, more than 400,000 Jewish Poles were confined within a square mile of the capital city, Warsaw. By the end of 1940, the ghetto was sealed off by brick walls, barbed wire and armed guards as other Nazi-occupied Jewish ghettos sprung up throughout Eastern Europe.

In April 1943, residents of the Warsaw ghetto staged a revolt to prevent deportation to extermination camps. The Jewish residents were able to stave off the Nazis for an impressive four weeks. However, in the end, the Nazi forces destroyed many of the bunkers the residents were hiding in, killing nearly 7,000 people. The 50,000 ghetto captives who survived, like this group pictured here, were sent to labor and extermination camps. This photograph was found amongst others  in a report by SS General Stroop titled, “The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw is No More!”

Human Remains at Majdanek

The photographs that emerged from the Nazi-led concentration camps are among some of the most horrifying ever produced, let alone during World War II. The images remain clear in one’s mind, families being captured and separated, emaciated bodies in barracks.

This 1944 photograph shows a pile of remaining bones at the Nazi concentration camp of Majdanek, the second largest death camp in Poland after Auschwitz.

'Taxis to Hell- and Back- Into the Jaws of Death'

This photograph titled “Taxis to Hell- and Back- Into the Jaws of Death” was taken on June 6, 1944, during Operation Overlord by  Robert F. Sargent , United States Coast Guard chief petty officer and “photographer’s mate.” The photograph was originally captioned,

“American invaders spring from the ramp of a Coast Guard-manned landing barge to wade those last perilous yards to the beach of Normandy. Enemy fire will cut some of them down. Their ‘taxi’ will pull itself off the sands and dash back to a Coast Guard-manned transport for more passengers.”

The D-Day military invasion was an enormous coordinated effort with the goal of ending World War II. Today, it is regarded by historians as one of the greatest military achievements.

Soviet Liberation of Auschwitz

On January 27, 1945, the Soviet army entered Auschwitz and found approximately 7,600 Jewish detainees who had been left behind. Here, a doctor of the 322nd Rifle Division of the Red Army helps take survivors out of Auschwitz. They stand at the entrance, where its iconic sign reads “Arbeit Mecht Frei,” (“Work Brings Freedom”). The Soviet Army also discovered mounds of corpses and hundreds of thousands of personal belongings.

Prior to the liberation of the camps by the Allies, Nazi guards forced what was known as death marches. Throughout the month of January, over 60,000 detainees were forced to march some 30 miles in their frail, emaciated states leading to the death of many prisoners. Those who survived were sent on to other concentration camps in Germany.

Battle of Iwo Jima

This Pulitzer Prize-winning photo has become synonymous with American victory. Taken during the Battle of Iwo Jima by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, it is one of the most reproduced, and copied, photographs in history.

During the battle,  marines took an American flag to the highest point on the island: Mount Suribachi. U.S. Marine photographer Louis Lowery captured the original shot but several hours later, more Marines headed to the crest with a larger flag. It was on this second attempt, that the iconic image was snapped. Three of the six soldiers seen raising the flag in the famous Rosenthal photo were killed during the Battle of Iwo Jima.

Copycat Images of Iwo Jima

The Battle of Iwo Jima image was so powerful in its time that it even caused copycats to stage similar images. This photograph was taken on April 30, 1945, during the Battle of Berlin. Soviet soldiers took their flag in victory and raised it over the rooftops of the bombed-out Reichstag.

The photograph was also  manipulated . The photographer concealed the wrists of the soldiers, which were covered in stolen wristwatches that were looted from the Germans. Stalin had given his soldiers strict instructions not to loot, so the photo manipulation was to avoid harsh consequences, discipline and possibly even death.

First Atom Bomb Over Hiroshima

On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay dropped the world’s first atom bomb over the city of Hiroshima . Prior to the outbreak of the war, American scientists had been considering the development of atomic weapons to defend against fascist regimes. Once the U.S. joined the war, “ The Manhattan Project ” began creating the bomb that created this mass destruction. Oddly enough it was nicknamed “Little Boy.”  

The bomb exploded 2,000 feet above Hiroshima with an impact equal to 12-15,000 tons of TNT. This photograph captured the mushroom cloud.

Approximately 80,000 people died immediately, with tens of thousands more dying later due to radiation exposure. In the end, the bomb wiped out 90 percent of the city.

V-J Day Celebration

Photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt captured this photo in Time Square on Victory against Japan Day (“ V-J Day ”), August 14, 1945. Sailor  George Mendonsa saw dental assistant  Greta Zimmer Friedman for the first time during the celebration at V-J Day. He grabbed and kissed her. This photograph would go on to become one of the most well-known in history, while also stirring up controversy. Many women have claimed to be the nurse over the years, and some contend it depicts a nonconsensual moment and even sexual harassment.

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Photography

The war in Gaza through a photographer’s eyes

By Loay Ayyoub | Dec 30, 2023

On the morning of Oct. 7, Hamas militants infiltrated Israel from their base in Gaza, staging a brutal attack that killed 1,200 people and shattered the image of the vaunted Israeli security state.

The bloodshed that day — the worst in Israel’s history — drew a vicious response.

Israel, which also sought the return of some 240 hostages kidnapped in the attack, imposed a near-total siege on Palestinians in Gaza and unleashed a staggering amount of firepower on both militant and civilian targets.

Loay Ayyoub for The Washington Post

Since then, the military campaign, including aerial bombardments and a ground invasion, has killed more than 21,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and almost the entire population of 2.2 million people has been displaced within the territory.

The health-care system has collapsed and disease is spreading. Tent cities have sprung up and more than half a million people — or 40 percent of Gazans — are at risk of famine , according to the U.N. World Food Program.

Israeli tanks and troops have penetrated deep into Gaza, encircling towns and cities, severing main roads and engaging in intense urban combat with Hamas and other militants from the north to the south.

Israel’s government has vowed to fight the war until Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, is destroyed.

But according to satellite imagery, airstrike data and U.N. damage assessments, Israel has prosecuted its war in Gaza at a pace and level of destruction that probably exceeds any recent conflict , possibly including one of the highest civilian casualty rates in the 21st century.

For close to three months, photographer Loay Ayyoub has chronicled the impact of the war in Gaza.

Two injured children are brought to the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Oct. 11.

People search for victims following an Israeli airstrike on a house in Khan Younis on Nov. 6.

A girl and her infant brother, both wounded, are treated at the Nasser Medical Hospital in Khan Younis on Oct. 19.

Destroyed buildings in the Rimal neighborhood in Gaza City on Oct. 10.

Palestinian women cry over the loss of a child in Bani Suhaila, east of Khan Younis, on Oct. 18.

Injured Palestinians are brought to the Nasser Medical Hospital on Dec. 4.

Injured Palestinians are treated at the Nasser Medical Hospital on Dec. 5.

Palestinians inspect the damage caused by an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis on Oct. 19.

Displaced Palestinian families from the northern and central Gaza Strip evacuate toward southern Gaza on Oct. 13.

Crowds wait for food in Rafah on Dec. 25.

People outside the morgue at Nasser Medical Hospital on Nov. 19.

People bury the bodies of Palestinians in a mass grave across the Kerem Shalom crossing in Rafah on Dec. 26.

Palestinians sit around a fire in front of their house, which was destroyed in a strike in Khan Younis, on Nov. 29.

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Photos by Loay Ayyoub. Text by Erin Cunningham. Photo editing by MaryAnne Golon and Dee Swann. Production by Olivier Laurent.

Photo Essay: Ukraine At War

Ukraine 2023 photo essay: life in kyiv.

The weather was quite nice (sunny skies with only scattered clouds) my first day in Kyiv, so I used the afternoon to walk around the city, sip coffee , and take photos.

Many I spoke to about my trip thought I was walking into an active war zone. Technically I may have been, but Kyiv is not currently a hotspot with Russian and Ukrainian troops exchanging fire. Instead, air defenses limit the ability of Russian forces to successfully attack the capital city and with the exception of the occasional air raid sirens or rolling blackouts, life continues. Many men have taken the call to arms, but Kyiv is full of younger men trying to survive in an uncertain time as we all do, simply by working.

The War in Ukraine is a very complex situation. I am firmly on the Ukrainian side, yet I do not discount that this geopolitical situation is deeply nuanced, with the two nations tightly interlaced from a historical perspective. But that makes it all the more important that we understand that even in cases of shared culture and language, turning a blind eye to an invasion based upon false pretenses is something we should not and cannot do.

A bit of background on these next several photos. Ukraine uses propaganda as well to advance its aims and has created a centerpiece in the heart of Kyiv to showcase Russian atrocities in the War.

About Author

Matthew Klint

Matthew is an avid traveler who calls Los Angeles home. Each year he travels more than 200,000 miles by air and has visited more than 135 countries. Working both in the aviation industry and as a travel consultant, Matthew has been featured in major media outlets around the world and uses his Live and Let's Fly blog to share the latest news in the airline industry, commentary on frequent flyer programs, and detailed reports of his worldwide travel.

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36 comments.

All this carnage just to control the neon supply of the world.

Beautiful photos. Such an interesting journey!

We mourn the dead. We calculate the damage. But it is from the living we learn. The struggles, the separations and the will to go forward make this story important. Thank you Matthew

I stand with Ukraine

Matthew, I’m pleased that you went to Ukraine and published your thoughts and photos here. It’s so easy for some people to fall into the “America First” trap of thinking that we don’t have any moral responsibilities to anyone other than US citizens. This article makes it harder to dismiss Ukraine as the infamous Neville Chamberlain did with Czechoslovakia when he called Germany’s invasion of that nation “a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.” I hope you will continue to write and publish on this topic.

No. The war industrial complex lost the “moral responsibility” argument a long time ago. See: Iraq and Afghanistan. Or see:

American historian Christopher Kelly and British historian Stuart Laycock are the authors of “America Invades: How We’ve Invaded Or Been Militarily Involved With Almost Every Country on Earth.” They define “invasion” as “an armed attack or intervention in a country by American forces.”

According to Kelly and Laycock’s book, the United States has invaded or fought in 84 of the 193 countries recognized by the United Nations and has been militarily involved with 191 of 193 – a staggering 98 percent.

–So we still need to be the worlds police? No. Enough is enough. It’s one thing to stand with the Ukrainian people. It’s another to stand with their ultra-corrupt government.

NBC News (2022): “Even though Putin is engaging in propaganda, it’s also true that Ukraine has a genuine Nazi problem — both past and present. .. But important as it is to defend the yellow-and-blue flag against the Kremlin’s brutal aggression, it would be a dangerous oversight to deny Ukraine’s antisemitic history and collaboration with Hitler’s Nazis, as well as the latter-day embrace of neo-Nazi factions in some quarters. Nowadays, Ukraine counts between 56,000 to 140,000 Jews, who enjoy freedoms and protections never imagined by their grandparents. That includes an updated law passed last month criminalizing antisemitic acts. Unfortunately, the law was intended to address a pronounced uptick in public displays of bigotry, including swastika-laden vandalism of synagogues and Jewish memorials, and eerie marches in Kyiv and other cities that celebrated the Waffen SS. In another ominous development, Ukraine has in recent years erected a glut of statues honoring Ukrainian nationalists whose legacies are tainted by their indisputable record as Nazi proxies. .. Far-right groups have also gained political currency in the past decade, none more chilling than Svoboda (formerly the Social National Party of Ukraine) .. Just as disturbing, neo-Nazis are part of some of Ukraine’s growing ranks of volunteer battalions. They are battle-hardened after waging some of the toughest street fighting against Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine following Putin’s Crimean invasion in 2014. One is the Azov Battalion, founded by an avowed white supremacist who claimed Ukraine’s national purpose was to rid the country of Jews and other inferior races. In 2018, the U.S. Congress stipulated that its aid to Ukraine couldn’t be used “to provide arms, training or other assistance to the Azov Battalion.” Even so, Azov is now an official member of the Ukraine National Guard. My own grandparents themselves had to flee western Ukraine to escape persecution, and it is tragic to see this cycle continue. If the country devolves into chaos and insurgency, Jews could once again be at risk from some of their fellow citizens. Not acknowledging this threat means that little is being done to guard against it.”

The Spectator (today): ‘This is not about Ukraine at all, but the world order,’ said Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, a month after the invasion. ‘The unipolar world is irretrievably receding into the past … A multi-polar world is being born.’ The US is no longer the world’s policeman, in other words – a message that resonates in countries that have long been suspicious of American power. The West’s core coalition may remain solid, but it has failed to win over many of the countries that refused to pick sides. Moscow’s diplomatic mission to build ties and hone a narrative over the past decade has paid dividends. –Is Putin winning? The world order is changing in his favour:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-putin-winning-the-world-order-is-changing-in-his-favour/

Spectator article author: Peter Frankopan–professor of global history at Oxford University and author of The Earth Transformed: An Untold History.

New York Times (March 2, 2023) Guest Essay: ‘America Is In Over Its Head’

The greatest blunder President Vladimir Putin may have made so far in Ukraine is giving the West the impression that Russia could lose the war. .. Now [Zelensky] calls for complete victory: the reconquering of every inch of Russian-occupied territory, including Crimea. Polls indicate that Ukrainians will settle for nothing less.

The trouble is that Ukraine has only one surefire way of accomplishing this feat in the near term: direct NATO involvement in the war. Only the full, Desert Storm style of deployment of NATO and U.S. troops and weaponry could bring about a comprehensive Ukrainian victory in a short period of time. (Never mind that such a deployment would most likely shorten the odds of one of the grimmer prospects of the war: The more Russia loses, the more it is likely to resort to nuclear weapons.)

Absent NATO involvement, the Ukrainian Army can hold the line and regain ground, as it has done in Kharkiv and Kherson, but complete victory is very nearly impossible. .. The historian Stephen Kotkin recently argued that Ukrainians may be better off defining victory as accession to the European Union rather than a complete recapture of all Ukrainian territory. And yet, except for countries that were neutral during the Cold War, each historical case of E.U. accession has been preceded by membership in NATO..

Only Washington ultimately has the power to decide how much of Ukraine it wants to bring under its umbrella. The actual official reluctance to include Ukraine in NATO has rarely been clearer, while the public embrace of Kyiv has never been more florid. In the meantime, European leaders may soon find themselves in the unenviable position of convincing Ukrainians that access to the common market and a European Marshall Fund is a reasonable exchange for “complete victory.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/02/opinion/ukraine-aid-united-states-nato.html

Author: Thomas Meaney–fellow at the Max Planck Society in Göttingen, Germany. He writes about U.S. foreign policy and international affairs in The London Review of Books, The Guardian and elsewhere.

NBC News (February 28, 2023) Exclusive: ‘A view from Crimea, the Russian-annexed territory Ukraine is hoping to seize back’

This is not Russia, according to Kyiv, its Western allies and the United Nations. It was annexed by the Kremlin in 2014, with the U.N. calling on Russia to return to its “internationally recognized borders.” And following Moscow’s broader invasion launched a year ago, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has vowed Ukraine will take Crimea back.

But Praskovya Baranova, 73, speaks Russian, feels Russian and lives here.

“This is our land,” she said Monday. “We will all put on uniforms and will go to the border to defend ourselves.”Her comments echoed those of most people NBC News spoke to in Crimea this week. While the government of President Vladimir Putin has cracked down on free speech everywhere, including in Crimea, the peninsula’s majority Russian-speaking population was considered more pro-Moscow than in other parts of Ukraine when it was annexed.

But Zelenskyy has said Crimea is one of the reasons he wants more powerful weapons from the United States and NATO. “Crimea is our land, our territory,” he said in January. “Give us your weapons — we will return what is ours.” And if Ukraine does try to take the peninsula back by force as its leaders have promised, many of the 2.4 million people living here will be caught in the middle.

Doubts persist, however, about whether the U.S. and other allies are willing to give Ukraine the firepower it may need for such an ambitious operation — especially given the Kremlin’s stance that Crimea represents a red line.

“The question of Crimea, and the question of what happens down the road, is something that we will come to,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

In the historically Tatar town of Bakhchisarai, Olga, who declined to give her last name, broke down in tears when she talked about the war.

“All mothers are crying. Both Russian and Ukrainian mothers are crying,” she said. “Why did it even start? Can’t we all live in peace? Can’t we just share this piece of bread in two halves?”

Now the conflict is threatening to once again engulf Crimea.

Zelenskyy has said the war that started here will end here, a prospect that — for residents of the peninsula and the rest of this war-torn region — may mean that an end to the bloodshed is a long way off.

“I have lived a long life already and I always thought that our generation would live without the war,” Olga says. “And you see, I was mistaken.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/inside-crimea-russian-military-annexed-ukraine-retake-putin-rcna72606

In answer to this question “Why did it even start? Can’t we all live in peace? Can’t we just share this piece of bread in two halves?”, Putin did a relatively bloodless territory grab in 2014 and then one on February 21st 2022 when he sent “peacekeepers” in Donbas. If he had stopped there, he’d have retired as a brilliant autocrat who had grabbed territory right from under Ukraine and NATO’s noses. He went for “the whole enchilada” thinking he could grab Ukraine in under 2 weeks. He gambled and lost.

If Putin has a “red line”, he blurred it by going to war AND annexing territory he didn’t even have boots fully on the ground yet. Once he opened up Donbas and Luhansk as “annexed” that was under conflict, Crimea became fair game and heck, after all, Russia argues that they’ve been in a proxy war since 2014 (even as they lied about it back then) so why shouldn’t Ukraine go for the best thing first?

The September offensive was interesting because Ukraine did a sort of rope-a-dope trick announcing they were going to liberate Kherson first diverting significant resources from Russia there including spetsnaz specialist military and other equipment and then hit Kharkiv region instead reclaiming ground there. Donbas Russian loyalists have expressed distaste about being conscripted to fight for other regions. The Ukrainians have, whether intentionally or not, sucked Russia into a war of attrition with trench warfare in Bakhmut and their morale is low.

Putin is a survivor, first and foremost, and puts HIS personal interests ahead of those of everyone else, including the Russian people. On the one hand, that may imply he’ll fight this to the very end rather than give up precious Crimea but on the other… will he want to go into WWIII and have himself, and his young family with the pretty Russian mistress gymnast, taken out if he escalates matters due to “the red line?” The “red line”, first and foremost, is his own life.

If he loses Crimea, he can always get his daughter’s media empire to declare a peace agreement where Ukraine remains neutral and won’t be in NATO formally (but keeps all that great weaponry) and perhaps keeps some of Donbas/Luhansk for the loyalists and will declare victory. It sound stupid to us, but Russians will believe whatever they are told as this guy at the end of the video said. The important thing, first and foremost, is Putin lives. Heck, I’d rather see him stay in office than some KGB hardliner who would risk WWIII for nationalist reasons ahead of his own neck.

Thank you for your reply and the context–it’s interesting and relevant and likely true with regard to Putin’s life. I appreciate you taking the time to explain those points.

I can’t help but still be wary and weary, however. Putin has made strides on the world stage, as The Spectator article explains. I wish the media would report more on these types of major geopolitical changes. Furthermore, there seems to be a lot of things going on beneath the surface, with BRICS and the petro dollar, et al, too:

https://news.bitcoin.com/expert-predicts-looming-economic-collapse-as-brics-nations-unite-against-the-dollar/

Separately, while a conspiracy, I saw this on Truth Social this week:

Russian Mil_Intelligence is warning that US/NATO forces, on the ground in Ukraine, are preparing a toxic event false_flag attack as cause for NATO to enter the war against Russia.

–I am hesitant to discount this for a few reasons, one being primarily due to the sheer volume of false flags in history alone. If anything, this seems likely. I hope I am wrong.

Either way, the military industrial complex wins again. I am sure they are just salivating at the thought of NATO and Crimea. It would be nice if most Americans, at least, understood that this fight is really about Crimea, and what that really means for American involvement. Hopefully they’ll get there. I won’t hold my breath.

Hello AJ. One thing is consistent about Russia is that they always lie out of habit so if they’re talking about a potential false flag attack by Russia against NATO, it’s likely they’re stirring up a local propaganda justification for increased mobilization. Many captured Russian POWs believe they’re not fighting Ukrainians but rather Polish troops who are looking to expand Poland. Russia considers it a kind of style to always engage in deception to the point that one can sometimes predict Russian behavior by the opposite of what they’re saying. I thought Russia was nuts to invade Ukraine a year ago and Russia had said they didn’t intend to invade, but this of course fooled me because I was thinking rationally rather than following “opposite rule’ with Russia. Russia threatens openly when they’re trying to bluff and claims to be peaceful when they’re looking to attack. For fun, watch what they do and compare and contrast to what they said on the matter a month or so ago. If Russians were saying they would NEVER use nukes in this situation, then I might break a sweat at this point. 🙂

One hazard, I think with this is that Russians themselves, including even Putin, consume their own propaganda so they are partly delusional. I love a quote by a military advisor: “The side that wins is the one that doesn’t believe their own self-serving propaganda.”

Regarding chances of Ukraine capturing Crimea. A lot of “history repeats itself” moments in this war with WWII and WWI trench warfare, but I invite you to wiki lookup the Polish-Soviet war of 1921 where, the newly formed Polish nation was able to push the Soviets out of Warsaw and back past Lviv with the USSR, quote, “suing” for peace. The Soviets only won WWII due to lend-lease from the Anglos as secretly admitted by Stalin and Zhukov. They won in 1812 only because of bad weather and, well, Napoleon over extended himself. In 1612, no kidding, the Poles occupied Moscow for over a year and could have forced Polish onto Russia but lost because of a religious schism between Orthodoxy and Catholicism. As a matter of ethnic pride, Russians celebrate “Unity Day” annually that Poles were pushed out of Moscow. I hang a Polish flag annually November 4th to celebrate along with them (for different reasons.)

Thank you again for your reply and all of the information. I will look up the 1921 war. There is much history and nuance, and propaganda, as you have well explained. The quote you mentioned reminds me of a similar one: ‘history is written by the victors’.

I do find that most of the (valid) criticism of Russia can also be applied to USA in the sense that it seems that the USA lies out of habit just like Russia, imo.

While the intricacies and nuances are complex, I do find it difficult to understand why anyone is “firmly on the Ukrainian side”, especially those with children. It is difficult (for me) to understand any parent taking a pro-WWIII and/or pro-nuclear war stance, considering the implications for millions of women and children in Ukraine, Crimea, and Russia alone.

One of my friends was born in Kazakhstan. She lived there, Ukraine, Russia, and UAE, among other places. She says that while the Ukrainian and Russian governments are obviously corrupt, that she finds the American government to be the aggressor and worse than Ukrainians and Russians. I do tend to agree.

When all of the powers fighting in a war are corrupt, it makes it really hard for citizens to figure out what is true and not and who to support and not.

If Biden and team could just come out and stay this is really about Crimea–and that we really are in for WWIII after all–I think that would be better than this slow drip of ‘official’ narrative changes.

Separately, I would be curious to know what you think about Holodomor.. I only learned about this recently. Why did I learn nothing about this in school? No one that I know seems to know anything about it. Was it my own ignorance?

“In 1932 and 1933, 7 Million (estimated) Ukrainians were massacred by genocidal famine ordered by the Bolshevik government. Many were Christians. Students do not learn about the Holodomor in middle school, high school, or even college. There aren’t dozens of major Hollywood films depicting the horrific events that took place. Our politicians aren’t referencing the Holodomor every other day and visiting Holodomor Museums. If you ask any random American on the street about the Holodomor they will have no idea what it is. Why is this?”

https://i.postimg.cc/5jdBbcBC/Screen-Shot-2023-03-04-at-8-39-49-PM.png

Ukraine has been steadily improving over the past few decades and I think that’s why the war happened in that most of the corruption in Ukraine was connected to Russians profiting from it because of their connections established during Soviet times. As Ukrainians strove to make their government more accountable, this resulted in breaking off ties with these Russian businessmen that were exploiting them. It’s amusing that Russians are angry about a supposed “2014 coup staged by the CIA” when this meant that FSB/KGB influencers had been pushed out. It also threatens Putin’s regime indirectly in that if Ukrainians could engage in what we Americans refer to as “civil disobedience”, protest and political action to effect regime change (via new elections!), then Russians might consider wanting the same since Ukrainians and Russians are so close both physically and personally (similar, to, say Austria, Czech, and Germany). In other words, Ukraine was getting better and a nation run by an autocrat didn’t like that trend.

Regarding your Kazakh friend: Russians and most former USSR/Russian speakers have a rather cynical attitude about the world and this is what I think their propagandists played upon with the disgruntled right in the states. It’s my contention that Republicans will never win another president election in my lifetime because of demographic trends with cheap labor immigration pushed by businesses (including Reagan) and identity politics and they’re frustrated and angry and taking it out on Ukraine. Even if the Ukrainian war didn’t happen, they’d still be as bad off but when your boss yells at you and you can’t do anything about it, you kick the dog when you get home. Russians have been taught to keep their mouths shut on political matters and they cheer on their military because that’s something to feel good about BUT… with one caveat in that they don’t want to go to war for Putin’s interests. Most are paid contractors from poor Asian regions or the rural regions (and lied to in that they didn’t think they’d see frontline combat) similar to in the states where many impoverished red staters join the military to get a free education. Most of the draftees have come from those regions as well but even so, Moscow has finally been affected and it has cut down support for the war by half according to polls.

About Crimea: This wasn’t “about” Crimea in the sense that Ukrainians didn’t intend to go to war to reclaim Crimea and Putin, as I said, if he had stopped at his “peacekeeping” mission could have stolen a lot but got greedy so now that he opened the door and committed all these war crimes, the Ukrainians are of the opinion that if they’re going to have to suffer casualties of war to secure their safety, they may as well go for the gold and it makes sense in terms of security as well since prior to the war, the Russians were using their Crimea naval base to interfere with Ukrainian shipping which feeds at least 1/2 billion people worldwide. Russian media and even Putin’s own statements have revealed their multigenerational plan to “get the band back together” and restore the USSR/Russian empire right to the German border via connecting with Moldova and Kaliningrad. I chuckle at how he whined about “NATO at his doorstep” when he used Belarus right on the Polish border to launch an offensive and is now trying to destabilize Moldova.

People who gripe about being “provoked” are experts at finding something to gripe about to rationalize their own aggression. I refer to this (not sure if anyone else coined the term) “The squeakiest wheel is the greasiest”. Those who engage in lying and victim claims are usually the most skilled at it beyond what “normies” such as us comprehend. It’s all fun and games until they get their hands caught in the cookie jar.

Again, please watch “With Fire and Sword” which, IMO, is like Conan the Barbarian and The Saxon Tales. Just great, masculine, fun along with a romance! A great date movie if you know a girl who can handle reading subtitles and grand battles with thousands of extras spurting blood from sword clashes. My sister went on her first date with her (now ex) husband who took her to Conan the Barbarian. She didn’t enjoy it. I suppose that was a foreshadow…

Hi PK, thank you for all of the context and info. Spurting blood movies aren’t my favorite kind, but I’ll look it up.

Re: Ukraine being better. I’m glad to hear of improvements, but the Nazi issue is very concerning. I never thought we’d get to a place where the American left and RINO’s are (seemingly blindly) supporting a country that has a big Nazi problem, but here we are.

Re: Crimea. Perhaps the Ukrainian people did not go into the war thinking about Crimea, but I’d be bet that Zelensky did. NATO equipment arriving in Europe: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CpZ5pqDAX0S . Not sure how this ends well for any of the involved countries.

Re: My Russian friend. I can understand downtrodden attitudes after watching their families suffer through socialism/communism for much of their lives. She just became an American citizen from a green card, but even still, I think she misses her family, and living in that region.

My biggest complaint, aside from WWIII & nuclear war concerns, is America not pursing its normal role as peace maker. What happened to diplomacy? That’s how I know this is just another notch on the belt for the war agendas/economies/machines.

David Sacks, a co-host of the “All In” podcast, about the Chinese peace proposal for Russia and Ukraine: U.S. Abdicating Traditional Role As Peace Mediator In Ukraine, China Now Stepping Into Void:

“I think it was a clever diplomatic maneuver by the Chinese to try to grab the moral high ground here. They’re basically saying, “We’re interested in peace, we’re going to put forward a proposal.” The Americans fell into their trap of dismissing it right away, throwing cold water on it.

The U.S. State Department has done this twice before. Back in March of last year, Naftali Bennet from Israel tried to negotiate a peace deal, and he himself said that it was the west and the Americans who rejected it. He thought it had a 50/50 chance of succeeding.

You then had the peace process in Istanbul, Turkey, with Erdogan presiding over it. You had the Istanbul Communique, which again they were very close to having a peace deal, and Blinken and the U.S. threw cold water on it.

So what’s happening here is the U.S. is not playing its traditional role as a peacemaker. We try to go in and mediate these conflicts. We’re doing the opposite of that. We’re throwing cold water on the peace process.

Now, why are we not acting as the mediator? I’ll tell you why. Because we are a co-belligerent. This is an American proxy war that we’re fighting against Russia, so we have no interest in mediating a peace process and moreover, we’re not trusted to mediate a peace process because we’re effectively one of the combatants.

So, from the Chinese point of view, the war in Ukraine is like manna from heaven. They love this war. Number one, because it is interfering with the U.S. pivot to Asia. We were basically in the process of reapplying all of our force, all of our military to contain them in East Asia and now we’re bogged down in Europe.

Number two, we’re massively depleting our stockpiles of weapons. We’ve used something like nine years of stingers and five years of javelins, and we’re running out of ammunition. I can’t believe it, we’re running out of artillery. The Russians actually have a 6-1 artillery advantage, which is why they’re actually doing much better in this war than people are acknowledging, we should come back to that.

The last thing is, the Chinese now are benefiting from the economic sanctions on Russia because Russia is now selling them oil and gas and all their minerals at a big discount. So this has been a wonderful thing from the Chinese standpoint. So this is the problem with us thinking in this Marvel movie way of the world in which we’re the Superfriends and we’re against the Legion of Doom. Because there is no natural alliance in the real world between China, Russia, and Iran. These are three very different regimes with different types of governments, who naturally would not get along. They would be adversaries and be suspicious of each other, as China and Russia were during the Cold War.

But we have pushed them closer together, this is the problem with having this overly moralistic view of foreign policy.”

–This point rings very true for me: “This is an American proxy war that we’re fighting against Russia, so we have no interest in mediating a peace process and moreover, we’re not trusted to mediate a peace process because we’re effectively one of the combatants.”–

The Guardian today:

“The debate over how far to go, and how quickly, in assisting Ukraine reflects another key problem – Nato’s lack of clearly defined war aims. Does the west seek Russia’s defeat and a generational victory over autocracy and tyranny, or merely Ukraine’s liberation?

Biden gave his answer in Warsaw last month. Ukraine, he suggested, was ground zero in the global struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. Yet French and German leaders are sticking to their view that, in the longer term, an accommodation must be reached with Moscow. Britain, Poland and the Baltic republics take a harder line. Such public divisions only help Putin.

Nato unity is also threatened by rightwing, Putin-friendly Turkish and Hungarian leaders, who are obstructing Sweden’s and Finland’s membership. The Finnish parliament voted overwhelmingly last week to press ahead anyway. Turkey’s behaviour is particularly disloyal. It should be told to drop its veto on the Swedes or face suspension from the alliance.

It’s not just about Ukraine. The western democracies must accept that the wider, head-on confrontation with Moscow that they have striven in vain to avoid is now upon them, exploding around their ears. Putin is mobilising Russian society for a second great patriotic war. He is going all out. French “ifs”, German “buts” and American “maybes” are increasingly unaffordable.

This is a fight the west cannot afford to lose – but cannot hope to win while a chronically reactive Nato, unsure of its purpose and aims, pulls its punches and lets Putin set the pace.”

Also, hard to believe that for the $100-200 billion given so far, that residents of Bakhmut only get aid once per month?

–Pressure from Russian forces mounted Saturday on Ukrainians hunkered down in Bakhmut, as residents attempted to flee with help from troops who Western analysts say may be preparing to withdraw from the key eastern stronghold.

A Ukrainian army representative who asked not to be named for operational reasons told The Associated Press that it was now too dangerous for civilians to leave Bakhmut by vehicle and that people had to flee on foot instead.

Civilians spoke about daily struggles as the fighting raged on nearly nonstop, reducing much of Bakhmut to rubble. Husband and wife Hennadiy Mazepa and Natalia Ishkova, who chose to remain in the city, said they lack food and basic utilities.

“Humanitarian (aid) is given to us only once a month. There is no electricity, no water, no gas,” Ishkova told AP on Saturday.

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-bakhmut-f893b10637da1b46939777379b5d9905

I was re-reading what you wrote and found it all fascinating. Thank you for sharing.

If you wanted to expand on this portion, I’d be interested to know more about what this means from your perspective. Not baiting, just wanted more detail to understand your points:

It’s my contention that Republicans will never win another president election in my lifetime because of demographic trends with cheap labor immigration pushed by businesses (including Reagan) and identity politics and they’re frustrated and angry and taking it out on Ukraine. Even if the Ukrainian war didn’t happen, they’d still be as bad off but when your boss yells at you and you can’t do anything about it, you kick the dog when you get home.

The Russian bots are getting more sophisticated.. yet the problem is American imperialism (cited by hilariously misunderstood historical analysis).

– An American legal history

Please feel free to point out actual misunderstood historical analysis. Until then..

Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters accuses Biden, Blinken, & Nuland of engineering the War in Ukraine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laWflR3T2Ro

Thank you. That photo montage was touching. Did you use an SLR or just your iPhone?

The sandbagged feature in the center of town was probably a monument they’re protecting. I notice a dearth of pedestrians perhaps because it’s winter but also maybe due to the war depopulating the city overall of women and children who usually would be out and about.

Just iPhone.

Thanks Matthew for this liveblogging during your journey in Ukraine.

I have very much appreciated we could follow you during this trip. And see how life is for the people in the city.

I was excited to read your posts first when I connected to internet everyday day.

Thanks for reading, Bob!

It would be nice for long pages of photos, to break them up into multiple pages so that things load better. At home it isn’t any issue but if you are traveling or on the phone and try to load this page, it can take a long time. Breaking it up into multiple pages would make a lot of sense.

Each photo is designed to load only when you scroll over it, which is a setting we have chosen on LALF in an attempt to mitigate exactly the problem you describe.

Did you catch any photos of Mrs Zelensky returning from her Paris shopping trip with Uncle Sam’s credit card?

The war has been so tough on the ruling class!

Sullivan still barely breaking a sweat though.

Looks like a beautiful place. I hope to visit when the war is over. Solidarity to the people of Ukraine who are trying to find happiness in the midst of all of this misery.

Wonderful pictures. Thanks. I particularly like the picture of the Lada. I didn’t think there were any of those still around. I am a bit surprised that the streets were comparatively empty.

@Matthew – Any thoughts on visiting Kiev now versus in peacetime for readers considering going there?

I took one as a taxi a few years ago and the driver said they’re expensive to maintain as the parts are getting hard to come by. I think they’re quaint and interesting looking and will miss them when, I think in a few years, most Ukrainians will have moved on from them but many will be kept around for nostalgia purposes.

I drove around and see a rust-bucket Lincoln Continental from the early 1980’s or even late 1970’s. The rust was pretty severe but it was street legal and I took a photo of it. Some of those cars were just amazingly well built coming off the assembly line. Perhaps the workers were on-point, firing on all cylinders, so-to-speak when they made a few of those cars and they were especially hardy.

Great work with this series of posts and your observations, Matthew. Balanced and fascinating from both the perspectives of a casual traveler and that of someone inside a nation defending itself. My takeaway is the resiliency shown there in not only to defend a country – but to defend living life as best as possible in the process.

Amen to that.

First Lady Jill Biden just gave an interview where she said President Biden would refuse to even consider taking a competency test for dementia.

“How many 30-year-olds could travel to Poland, get on the train? Go nine more hours, go to Ukraine, meet with President (Volodymyr) Zelensky?” she said. “So, look at the man. Look what he’s doing. Look what he continues to do each and every day.”

Answer: Matthew of Live and Let’s Fly. He carries his own bags. He doesn’t fly private jet nor private train. He scrambles to get a seat back to JFK. Not the same as Air Force One and the Ukrainian special VIP train. (There is a report that President Jimmy Carter pretended to carry his own luggage but that it was an empty small suitcase. Ha ha! Phony)

Great post and great trip! This was a special one. It made sense to me from the beginning, and I’m glad it was such a success.

Peter the Great wannabe meets Winston Churchill wannabe.So,what’s the end game to this?

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U.N. Photo Collection Shows Gaza War Through the Lens of Palestinian Journalists

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• Israel & Palestine
• Charlotte Cans head of photography for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
• "Gaza's Carnage Through the Eyes of Palestinian Photojournalists"

The Gaza Collective Photo Essay project, organized by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs ( OCHA ), collected work from 14 Palestinian photographers who were each asked to share one image that captured the devastation of the Gaza Strip over the last six months. We speak with Charlotte Cans, head of photography at OCHA , about the project. “It’s one thing to say there’s a war and it’s horrible, and it’s another thing to see an image of a child being pulled out from the rubble. It really hits you differently,” Cans says of the motivation behind the project. “It was really important to elevate the stories coming from Palestinian photojournalists, who are the only window into what is going on in Gaza.”

More from this Interview

• Part 1: “Fear and Terror”: Gaza Photographer Ahmed Zakot on Documenting the Carnage of Israel’s Assault
• Part 2: U.N. Photo Collection Shows Gaza War Through the Lens of Palestinian Journalists

AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . I’m Amy Goodman.

On Thursday, I spoke with Charlotte Cans, head of photography for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA , about the Gaza Collective Photo Essay project she has led. She asked 14 Palestinian photographers to share one image taken in the Gaza Strip over the last six months that they want the world never to forget. A warning to our TV audience: The interview features graphic images. She speaks from Paris, France.

CHARLOTTE CANS : Thank you very much, Amy, for having me and having us and talking about this project, which is very special indeed.

I think, you know, the first thing is that a couple of weeks into the war, the U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said the situation in Gaza is not just a humanitarian crisis, it’s a crisis of humanity. And I think, for me, for us, this is what, you know, started it all, because the assault that we’re seeing on the population of Gaza is unprecedented in brutality, scope and intensity. And the figures speak for themselves. In six months, you had over 100,000 people killed and wounded, 70% of whom are children and women. You know, this staggering number, as well, that the number of children killed in Gaza is higher — in six months, is higher than the number of children killed in four years of all the wars combined all around the world. You have three-quarters of the population displaced. Famine is imminent. Law and order are breaking down. Humanitarian aid is actively blocked, and on and on and on. And, you know, I think these figures are so staggering that they defy comprehension. And so, for me, and for us, it was really important to try to humanize these numbers, to make them real and to make them understandable.

And I think it’s quite paradoxical, because there’s been an overflow of images and stories on Gaza, flooding our phones, flooding our screens, you know, for six months, but somehow, somehow, it is — it is not getting across. And I could see it in my direct environment, you know, talking to friends and families. I could see that people didn’t really understand what was going on in Gaza. Yes, they know there’s a war in Gaza, and they know that wars are bad and horrible. But it’s one thing to say there’s a war and it’s horrible, and it’s another thing to see an image of a child being pulled out from the rubble. It really hits you differently.

And so, I think, for us, it was really — as the U.N., as OCHA , which is the humanitarian arm of the U.N., it was really important to elevate these stories coming from Palestinian photojournalists, who are the only window into what is going on in Gaza, because, as you know, international foreign journalists have been banned of entering Gaza independently. None of them have, except from Clarissa Ward, who went in for like two hours at the end of sometime in December. So, Palestinian photojournalists are the only ones, are the only window into the suffering of people in Gaza. And so it was really important for us to go to them and to try to share and elevate again the incredible, tragic testimonies that they are reporting and covering, day in, day out, for the last six months.

AMY GOODMAN : So, Charlotte Cans, can you talk about how you reached out to Palestinian photojournalists?

CHARLOTTE CANS : Yeah, that’s a really good question, because it’s been incredibly difficult. It’s been a process that has been going on for weeks. It took us over three months to put this project together. And, you know, as you know, the communications have been really, really difficult with Gaza. I think, you know, it got better recently, but in December, January, up until February, there were like constant blackouts. So it was hard to get a hold of people. And you would get a hold of someone, and then the person would not be responding for days on end. And suddenly you had, you know, an answer, and they were like, “Yes, I’m really happy to participate. I will send you images,” and then nothing again for a couple of days. So it was this constant back-and-forth.

And I just want to say here that, you know, the way we made it happen also has been through an incredible photojournalist called Tanya Habjouqa, who’s been based in Jerusalem, Ramallah for the past 25 years. Tanya is an award-winning photojournalist. She knows the country and the region inside out. And she had an incredible networks of, you know, colleagues, Palestinian colleagues. And so, through Tanya, as well, we were really able to reach out to a number of them, bring them on board. And, you know, it was a combination of, again, her network, word of mouth. And also, Amy, to be honest, you know, they are being killed also, Palestinian photojournalists, so there are not that many of them left in Gaza, to be honest, and this is tragic.

AMY GOODMAN : So, introduce us to some of the photographs that are in this collection.

CHARLOTTE CANS : OK. So, I think — let me actually — I’m just taking it in front of me. I think, you know, there’s one photo for me that hits me really hard. It’s the photo from photographer Jehad Al Shrafii [ @jehad_alshrafi ]. Jehad is a 22-year-old Palestinian photographer from Gaza. And he took this image of Ibrahim, who’s a 12-year-old boy, like any other boy in the world, who had his arm amputated because of his injuries in the last six months. And we can see him, on the image, trying to brush his teeth. And he’s holding the toothbrush with his mouth and the paste, the toothpaste, in his left hand. And he’s trying to do something as simple as brushing his teeth. And you can see in this image how difficult it is and how his life has been turned upside down.

And I think, you know, with the number of children killed in Gaza and wounded — and I think, again, this is pretty unprecedented compared to other conflicts and wars around the world, you know. And when we say — I think it’s Save the Children, had this terrible statistic a few months ago, which was that 10 children per day, on average, have lost an arm or a limb in the war. And when you see that, when you see Ibrahim trying to brush his teeth, you understand what that means. It’s his life has — his life has been shattered. But it’s not just his life. It’s his family’s life, as well, because he will need a caregiver for years to come. So, again, it’s like, you know, through the war, it’s entire families who are being affected. And I think this image really hits, you know, very hard to me.

AMY GOODMAN : Charlotte, introduce us to Belal Khaled [ @belalkh ] and his picture.

CHARLOTTE CANS : Yeah. So, Belal is a very interesting, you know, character and person. He used to be a calligraphy artist, and he is still a kind of calligraphy artist, but he was, you know, making a living as a calligraphy artist also before the war. He’s also a photojournalist. He’s an incredible photographer. His images are stunningly tragic, very often.

There’s a couple of images of him in the project. One of them is of a little boy who is, Amy, the color of ashes. He’s sitting on a hospital bed crying, and there’s blood dripping along his face. And Belal, in the text that accompanies the photo — because that’s something very special to this project. It’s not just the images. It’s the personal texts that the photographers have shared to accompany the images, where they explain their emotions and the backstory to the image and what the story means to them. And Belal has these words with this image. He says that this child, when he got to hospital, was crying for his bicycle. And he kept saying that he wanted his bicycle, he wanted his bicycle, not having fully comprehended what had just, you know, hit him. So, this is a really strong image.

There’s another one from Belal, which is incredibly strong, as well, where you see a family. And I think this is very special, because in many images that we’ve seen on Gaza, quite often it’s one parent or the other with their dead child, but in this image you see the entire family. You see the mother, you see the father, you see the brother, and you see this dead child in their arms. And their grief and their suffering is so raw in this image. It’s incredibly strong.

AMY GOODMAN : I wanted to read the quote that Belal Khaled sent. He said, “A Palestinian child was carried to al-Nasser Hospital, pulled out from rubble. At the hospital his aunt recognized him and started screaming his name. 'This is Diya'a, this is Diya’a…’. When his siblings, mother and father arrived, their pain was unforgettable. He had left their home to get some wood for heat when he was killed in an airstrike.” The family forms a cocoon around his shrouded small body. Tell us about the photographer Jehan Kawera [ @jehan_kawaree ].

CHARLOTTE CANS : So, Jehan is a young female photographer. There’s a couple of them in the project. We have three female photographers represented, with Jehan, Mariam Abu Dagga [ @mariam_abu_dagga ] and Samar Abu Elouf [ @samarabuelouf ]. So there’s three of them.

Jehan has this poignant image of a young girl who’s lying on a hospital floor. It’s a very graphic image. It’s very hard. You can see the hands of a health specialist trying to, you know, fix something, her drip, or whatever that is. But what is striking in this image is that she’s got her right hand lying on the floor, and in her right hand, there’s a piece of candy. And it’s this, you know, typical candy that kids in many different places of the world eat that is very recognizable. And seeing this young girl, this — she’s probably 6 or 7, no more, lying on the floor with a piece of candy in her hand.

And the quote, again, of Jehan is incredibly, incredibly powerful. And I have it in front of me, actually, Amy. I don’t know if I can read it to you. But she says that she could not hold herself up when she saw this little girl “gasping for breath, and the piece of candy, still stuck in her hand stained with blood.” She “will never forget when she was carried to the mortuary.” And she says here, “The candy fell at my feet on the blood-soaked ground.”

And again, I think what is so strong with this project, again, is that these images hit you because they make this suffering so relatable. These are not just random kids. When you recognize the piece of candy in her hand, you can see all the kids that you know, your own kids, your nephews, your nieces. And that makes it, again, particularly strong.

AMY GOODMAN : Can you tell us about Saher Alghorra [ @saher_alghorra ]?

CHARLOTTE CANS : Yes. So, Saher has an incredible image in the project where you see a dad — it’s in a white tent — screaming. And the dad is in a bit of a hallucinatory state, as he says himself in his text. And right next to him lying on the floor is the body of his dead child, covered by white cloth. And Saher has been documenting the war for the last six months for many different outlets. He’s a really strong photographer. He just won Picture of the Year, actually, for his work. And again, you know, this image is — the suffering is so raw and so eerie. Yeah, it’s just — it just hits you, you know, directly. It just stabs you in the heart, really, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN : And then there’s Mahmud Hams [ @mahmudhams ]. It’s similar, but different. He says, “Mohamed El-Aloul is a cameraman for Anadolu news agency. He is my friend. We spend a lot time together, and we also often cover the war together. Four of his children were killed in an airstrike. His wife was severely injured. When he heard what happened to his family, it was early morning, and we were together at the hospital. We went to the morgue at Al Alqsa. I knew his children. All I could do was to be there, with him, crying.”

CHARLOTTE CANS : Yeah, absolutely. Mahmud is a photographer for AFP , Agence France-Presse, who’s been covering 30 years of war in Gaza. And I think this image is very strong, as you say, Amy, because it talks about, you know, the fact that, again, these Palestinian photojournalists are being killed in this war. And they are not just witnesses. They are victims, as well, whether they are being killed or wounded or whether they are being displaced with their families. And this, again, makes it very, very special in, you know, what we’re seeing unfolding in Gaza right now.

AMY GOODMAN : And what you know of Mohamed El-Aloul, the cameraman who lost his children? He’s wearing — of course, he’s wearing the press vest.

CHARLOTTE CANS : Yeah, exactly. And I think in this incident where the house where he was staying in got targeted by an airstrike, he lost three of his children and his brother on the strike. So, again, we’re talking about entire families being detonated.

AMY GOODMAN : And Anadolu news agency, where is it?

CHARLOTTE CANS : So, Anadolu is a Turkish news agency. It’s one of the big news agencies, again, based, headquartered in Turkey.

AMY GOODMAN : Tell us about Mohammed Zaanoun [ @m.z.gaza ].

CHARLOTTE CANS : So, Mohammed Zaanoun is also one of the, you know, main photojournalists who’s been reporting on this war since the beginning. He’s working for several news agencies. He’s working — you know, he’s been working for Al Jazeera. He’s been working for Le Monde . He’s been working for several, for a couple of others.

His images are all very striking. There’s a couple in the project. There’s one of where you can only see the feet of a child, and you only see that it’s tiny feet in the photo — you don’t know who it is — completely buried under the rubble. And Mohammed has this caption, which says, “A child’s feet were all that were visible from the rubble. The little girl was killed along with three of her brothers by an Israeli air strike in Khan Yunis market. The mother, she lived, but was hopeful for hours that they would be pulled out alive by the paramedics, from the rubble where her home once stood.”

And I think this photo is incredible, Amy, as well, because, you know, it’s probably — again, when people have seen them, it’s one which really stayed with them. It’s graphic in a way, but it’s not graphic in another. But the emotion that you have when you see this image, again, you know, very strong, and it makes you understand, again, what we were talking about before: What does this war look like, day in, day out, for people and families and children in Gaza? You know, seeing a child’s feet under the rubble, you know, again, makes you understand the war quite differently than just reading about it.

AMY GOODMAN : Charlotte Cans, head of photography for OCHA , the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. She coordinated the Gaza Collective Photo Essay project. Charlotte said these are not just photojournalists; these are also civilians. They’re witnesses and victims to the horrible conflict that we’re seeing unfolding in front of our eyes. We particularly thank Charlotte for this interview. She was in Paris after the passing of her mother this week.

And that does it for our broadcast. Democracy Now! is currently accepting applications for our digital fellowship . Learn more and apply at democracynow.org.

Democracy Now! is produced with Renée Feltz, Mike Burke, Deena Guzder, Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Messiah Rhodes, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, Tami Woronoff, Charina Nadura, Sam Alcoff, Tey-Marie Astudillo, John Hamilton, Robby Karran, Hany Massoud. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.

“Fear and Terror”: Gaza Photographer Ahmed Zakot on Documenting the Carnage of Israel’s Assault

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Sudden Death in Vietnam: ‘One Ride With Yankee Papa 13’

Vietnam War, LIFE Magazine, Yankee Papa 13

Larry Burrows Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Written By: Ben Cosgrove

In the spring of 1965, within weeks of 3,500 American Marines arriving in Vietnam, a 39-year-old Briton named Larry Burrows began work on a feature for LIFE magazine, chronicling the day-to-day experience of U.S. troops on the ground and in the air in the midst of the rapidly widening war. The photographs in this gallery focus on a calamitous March 31, 1965, helicopter mission; Burrows’ “report from Da Nang,” featuring his pictures and his personal account of the harrowing operation, was published two weeks later as a now-famous cover story in the April 16, 1965, issue of LIFE.

Over the decades, of course, LIFE published dozens of photo essays by some of the 20th century’s greatest photographers. Very few of those essays, however, managed to combine raw intensity and technical brilliance to such powerful effect as “One Ride With Yankee Papa 13” universally regarded as one of the greatest photographic documents to emerge from the war in Vietnam.

Here, LIFE.com presents Burrows’ seminal photo essay in its entirety: all of the photos that appeared in LIFE are here. (Note: In a picture from the article, Burrows mounts a camera to a special rig attached to an M-60 machine gun in helicopter YP13 a.k.a., “Yankee Papa 13.” At the end of this gallery, there are three previously unpublished photographs from Burrows’ 1965 assignment.]

Burrows, LIFE informed its readers, “had been covering the war in Vietnam since 1962 and had flown on scores of helicopter combat missions. On this day he would be riding in [21-year-old crew chief James] Farley’s machine and both were wondering whether the mission would be a no-contact milk run or whether, as had been increasingly the case in recent weeks, the Vietcong would be ready and waiting with .30-caliber machine guns. In a very few minutes Farley and Burrows had their answer.”

The following paragraphs lifted directly from LIFE illustrate the vivid, visceral writing that accompanied Burrows’ astonishing images, including Burrows’ own words, transcribed from an audio recording made shortly after the 1965 mission:

“The Vietcong dug in along the tree line, were just waiting for us to come into the landing zone,” Burrows reported. “We were all like sitting ducks and their raking crossfire was murderous. Over the intercom system one pilot radioed Colonel Ewers, who was in the lead ship: ‘Colonel! We’re being hit.’ Back came the reply: ‘We’re all being hit. If your plane is flyable, press on.’

“We did,” Burrows continued, “hurrying back to a pickup point for another load of troops. On our next approach to the landing zone, our pilot, Capt. Peter Vogel, spotted Yankee Papa 3 down on the ground. Its engine was still on and the rotors turning, but the ship was obviously in trouble. “Why don’t they lift off?’ Vogel muttered over the intercom. Then he set down our ship nearby to see what the trouble was.

“[Twenty-year-old gunner, Pfc. Wayne] Hoilien was pouring machine-gun fire at a second V.C. gun position at the tree line to our left. Bullet holes had ripped both left and right of his seat. The plexiglass had been shot out of the cockpit and one V.C. bullet had nicked our pilot’s neck. Our radio and instruments were out of commission. We climbed and climbed fast the hell out of there. Hoilien was still firing gunbursts at the tree line.”

Not until YP13 pulled away and out of range of enemy fire were Farley and Hoilien able to leave their guns and give medical attention to the two wounded men from YP3. The co-pilot, 1st Lt. James Magel, was in bad shape. When Farley and Hoilien eased off his flak vest, they exposed a major wound just below his armpit. “Magel’s face registered pain,” Burrows reported, “and his lips moved slightly. But if he said anything it was drowned out by the noise of the copter. He looked pale and I wondered how long he could hold on. Farley began bandaging Magel’s wound. The wind from the doorway kept whipping the bandages across his face. Then blood started to come from his nose and mouth and a glazed look came into his eyes. Farley tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but Magel was dead. Nobody said a word.”

In his searing, deeply sympathetic portrait of young men fighting for their lives at the very moment America is ramping up its involvement in Southeast Asia, Larry Burrows’ work anticipates the scope and the dire, lethal arc of the entire war in Vietnam.

Six years after “Yankee Papa 13” ran in LIFE, Burrows was killed, along with three other journalists Henri Huet, Kent Potter and Keisaburo Shimamoto when a helicopter in which they were flying was shot down over Laos in February, 1971. He was 44 years old.

Vietnam War, LIFE Magazine, Yankee Papa 13 Larry Burrows Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

LIFE_unpublished_slide

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How to Create an Engaging Photo Essay (with Examples)

Photo essays tell a story in pictures. They're a great way to improve at photography and story-telling skills at once. Learn how to do create a great one.

Learn | Photography Guides | By Ana Mireles

Photography is a medium used to tell stories – sometimes they are told in one picture, sometimes you need a whole series. Those series can be photo essays.

If you’ve never done a photo essay before, or you’re simply struggling to find your next project, this article will be of help. I’ll be showing you what a photo essay is and how to go about doing one.

You’ll also find plenty of photo essay ideas and some famous photo essay examples from recent times that will serve you as inspiration.

If you’re ready to get started, let’s jump right in!

Table of Contents

What is a Photo Essay?

A photo essay is a series of images that share an overarching theme as well as a visual and technical coherence to tell a story. Some people refer to a photo essay as a photo series or a photo story – this often happens in photography competitions.

Photographic history is full of famous photo essays. Think about The Great Depression by Dorothea Lange, Like Brother Like Sister by Wolfgang Tillmans, Gandhi’s funeral by Henri Cartier Bresson, amongst others.

What are the types of photo essay?

Despite popular belief, the type of photo essay doesn’t depend on the type of photography that you do – in other words, journalism, documentary, fine art, or any other photographic genre is not a type of photo essay.

Instead, there are two main types of photo essays: narrative and thematic .

As you have probably already guessed, the thematic one presents images pulled together by a topic – for example, global warming. The images can be about animals and nature as well as natural disasters devastating cities. They can happen all over the world or in the same location, and they can be captured in different moments in time – there’s a lot of flexibility.

A narrative photo essa y, on the other hand, tells the story of a character (human or not), portraying a place or an event. For example, a narrative photo essay on coffee would document the process from the planting and harvesting – to the roasting and grinding until it reaches your morning cup.

What are some of the key elements of a photo essay?

• Tell a unique story – A unique story doesn’t mean that you have to photograph something that nobody has done before – that would be almost impossible! It means that you should consider what you’re bringing to the table on a particular topic.
• Put yourself into the work – One of the best ways to make a compelling photo essay is by adding your point of view, which can only be done with your life experiences and the way you see the world.
• Add depth to the concept – The best photo essays are the ones that go past the obvious and dig deeper in the story, going behind the scenes, or examining a day in the life of the subject matter – that’s what pulls in the spectator.
• Nail the technique – Even if the concept and the story are the most important part of a photo essay, it won’t have the same success if it’s poorly executed.
• Build a structure – A photo essay is about telling a thought-provoking story – so, think about it in a narrative way. Which images are going to introduce the topic? Which ones represent a climax? How is it going to end – how do you want the viewer to feel after seeing your photo series?
• Make strong choices – If you really want to convey an emotion and a unique point of view, you’re going to need to make some hard decisions. Which light are you using? Which lens? How many images will there be in the series? etc., and most importantly for a great photo essay is the why behind those choices.

9 Tips for Creating a Photo Essay

Credit: Laura James

1. Choose something you know

To make a good photo essay, you don’t need to travel to an exotic location or document a civil war – I mean, it’s great if you can, but you can start close to home.

Depending on the type of photography you do and the topic you’re looking for in your photographic essay, you can photograph a local event or visit an abandoned building outside your town.

It will be much easier for you to find a unique perspective and tell a better story if you’re already familiar with the subject. Also, consider that you might have to return a few times to the same location to get all the photos you need.

2. Follow your passion

Most photo essays take dedication and passion. If you choose a subject that might be easy, but you’re not really into it – the results won’t be as exciting. Taking photos will always be easier and more fun if you’re covering something you’re passionate about.

3. Take your time

A great photo essay is not done in a few hours. You need to put in the time to research it, conceptualizing it, editing, etc. That’s why I previously recommended following your passion because it takes a lot of dedication, and if you’re not passionate about it – it’s difficult to push through.

4. Write a summary or statement

Photo essays are always accompanied by some text. You can do this in the form of an introduction, write captions for each photo or write it as a conclusion. That’s up to you and how you want to present the work.

5. Learn from the masters

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Making a photographic essay takes a lot of practice and knowledge. A great way to become a better photographer and improve your storytelling skills is by studying the work of others. You can go to art shows, review books and magazines and look at the winners in photo contests – most of the time, there’s a category for photo series.

6. Get a wide variety of photos

Think about a story – a literary one. It usually tells you where the story is happening, who is the main character, and it gives you a few details to make you engage with it, right?

The same thing happens with a visual story in a photo essay – you can do some wide-angle shots to establish the scenes and some close-ups to show the details. Make a shot list to ensure you cover all the different angles.

Some of your pictures should guide the viewer in, while others are more climatic and regard the experience they are taking out of your photos.

7. Follow a consistent look

Both in style and aesthetics, all the images in your series need to be coherent. You can achieve this in different ways, from the choice of lighting, the mood, the post-processing, etc.

8. Be self-critical

Once you have all the photos, make sure you edit them with a good dose of self-criticism. Not all the pictures that you took belong in the photo essay. Choose only the best ones and make sure they tell the full story.

9. Ask for constructive feedback

Often, when we’re working on a photo essay project for a long time, everything makes perfect sense in our heads. However, someone outside the project might not be getting the idea. It’s important that you get honest and constructive criticism to improve your photography.

How to Create a Photo Essay in 5 Steps

Credit: Quang Nguyen Vinh

1. Choose your topic

This is the first step that you need to take to decide if your photo essay is going to be narrative or thematic. Then, choose what is it going to be about?

Ideally, it should be something that you’re interested in, that you have something to say about it, and it can connect with other people.

2. Research your topic

To tell a good story about something, you need to be familiar with that something. This is especially true when you want to go deeper and make a compelling photo essay. Day in the life photo essays are a popular choice, since often, these can be performed with friends and family, whom you already should know well.

3. Plan your photoshoot

Depending on what you’re photographing, this step can be very different from one project to the next. For a fine art project, you might need to find a location, props, models, a shot list, etc., while a documentary photo essay is about planning the best time to do the photos, what gear to bring with you, finding a local guide, etc.

Every photo essay will need different planning, so before taking pictures, put in the required time to get things right.

4. Experiment

It’s one thing to plan your photo shoot and having a shot list that you have to get, or else the photo essay won’t be complete. It’s another thing to miss out on some amazing photo opportunities that you couldn’t foresee.

So, be prepared but also stay open-minded and experiment with different settings, different perspectives, etc.

5. Make a final selection

Editing your work can be one of the hardest parts of doing a photo essay. Sometimes we can be overly critical, and others, we get attached to bad photos because we put a lot of effort into them or we had a great time doing them.

Try to be as objective as possible, don’t be afraid to ask for opinions and make various revisions before settling down on a final cut.

7 Photo Essay Topics, Ideas & Examples

Credit: Michelle Leman

• Architectural photo essay

Using architecture as your main subject, there are tons of photo essay ideas that you can do. For some inspiration, you can check out the work of Francisco Marin – who was trained as an architect and then turned to photography to “explore a different way to perceive things”.

You can also lookup Luisa Lambri. Amongst her series, you’ll find many photo essay examples in which architecture is the subject she uses to explore the relationship between photography and space.

• Process and transformation photo essay

This is one of the best photo essay topics for beginners because the story tells itself. Pick something that has a beginning and an end, for example, pregnancy, the metamorphosis of a butterfly, the life-cycle of a plant, etc.

Keep in mind that these topics are linear and give you an easy way into the narrative flow – however, it might be difficult to find an interesting perspective and a unique point of view.

• A day in the life of ‘X’ photo essay

There are tons of interesting photo essay ideas in this category – you can follow around a celebrity, a worker, your child, etc. You don’t even have to do it about a human subject – think about doing a photo essay about a day in the life of a racing horse, for example – find something that’s interesting for you.

• Time passing by photo essay

It can be a natural site or a landmark photo essay – whatever is close to you will work best as you’ll need to come back multiple times to capture time passing by. For example, how this place changes throughout the seasons or maybe even over the years.

A fun option if you live with family is to document a birthday party each year, seeing how the subject changes over time. This can be combined with a transformation essay or sorts, documenting the changes in interpersonal relationships over time.

• Travel photo essay

Do you want to make the jump from tourist snapshots into a travel photo essay? Research the place you’re going to be travelling to. Then, choose a topic.

If you’re having trouble with how to do this, check out any travel magazine – National Geographic, for example. They won’t do a generic article about Texas – they do an article about the beach life on the Texas Gulf Coast and another one about the diverse flavors of Texas.

The more specific you get, the deeper you can go with the story.

• Socio-political issues photo essay

This is one of the most popular photo essay examples – it falls under the category of photojournalism or documental photography. They are usually thematic, although it’s also possible to do a narrative one.

Depending on your topic of interest, you can choose topics that involve nature – for example, document the effects of global warming. Another idea is to photograph protests or make an education photo essay.

It doesn’t have to be a big global issue; you can choose something specific to your community – are there too many stray dogs? Make a photo essay about a local animal shelter. The topics are endless.

• Behind the scenes photo essay

A behind-the-scenes always make for a good photo story – people are curious to know what happens and how everything comes together before a show.

Depending on your own interests, this can be a photo essay about a fashion show, a theatre play, a concert, and so on. You’ll probably need to get some permissions, though, not only to shoot but also to showcase or publish those images.

4 Best Photo Essays in Recent times

Now that you know all the techniques about it, it might be helpful to look at some photo essay examples to see how you can put the concept into practice. Here are some famous photo essays from recent times to give you some inspiration.

Habibi by Antonio Faccilongo

This photo essay wan the World Press Photo Story of the Year in 2021. Faccilongo explores a very big conflict from a very specific and intimate point of view – how the Israeli-Palestinian war affects the families.

He chose to use a square format because it allows him to give order to things and eliminate unnecessary elements in his pictures.

With this long-term photo essay, he wanted to highlight the sense of absence and melancholy women and families feel towards their husbands away at war.

The project then became a book edited by Sarah Leen and the graphics of Ramon Pez.

Picture This: New Orleans by Mary Ellen Mark

The last assignment before her passing, Mary Ellen Mark travelled to New Orleans to register the city after a decade after Hurricane Katrina.

The images of the project “bring to life the rebirth and resilience of the people at the heart of this tale”, – says CNNMoney, commissioner of the work.

Each survivor of the hurricane has a story, and Mary Ellen Mark was there to record it. Some of them have heartbreaking stories about everything they had to leave behind.

Others have a story of hope – like Sam and Ben, two eight-year-olds born from frozen embryos kept in a hospital that lost power supply during the hurricane, yet they managed to survive.

Selfie by Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman is an American photographer whose work is mainly done through self-portraits. With them, she explores the concept of identity, gender stereotypes, as well as visual and cultural codes.

One of her latest photo essays was a collaboration with W Magazine entitled Selfie. In it, the author explores the concept of planned candid photos (‘plandid’).

The work was made for Instagram, as the platform is well known for the conflict between the ‘real self’ and the one people present online. Sherman started using Facetune, Perfect365 and YouCam to alter her appearance on selfies – in Photoshop, you can modify everything, but these apps were designed specifically to “make things prettier”- she says, and that’s what she wants to explore in this photo essay.

Tokyo Compression by Michael Wolf

Michael Wolf has an interest in the broad-gauge topic Life in Cities. From there, many photo essays have been derived – amongst them – Tokyo Compression .

He was horrified by the way people in Tokyo are forced to move to the suburbs because of the high prices of the city. Therefore, they are required to make long commutes facing 1,5 hours of train to start their 8+ hour workday followed by another 1,5 hours to get back home.

To portray this way of life, he photographed the people inside the train pressed against the windows looking exhausted, angry or simply absent due to this way of life.

You can visit his website to see other photo essays that revolve around the topic of life in megacities.

Final Words

It’s not easy to make photo essays, so don’t expect to be great at it right from your first project.

Start off small by choosing a specific subject that’s interesting to you –  that will come from an honest place, and it will be a great practice for some bigger projects along the line.

Whether you like to shoot still life or you’re a travel photographer, I hope these photo essay tips and photo essay examples can help you get started and grow in your photography.

Let us know which topics you are working on right now – we’ll love to hear from you!

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Ana Mireles is a Mexican researcher that specializes in photography and communications for the arts and culture sector.

Penelope G. To Ana Mireles Such a well written and helpful article for an writer who wants to inclue photo essay in her memoir. Thank you. I will get to work on this new skill. Penelope G.

Herman Krieger Photo essays in black and white

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These photos capture 100 days of agony in an unprecedented war between Israel and Hamas

Palestinians wave their national flag and celebrate by a destroyed Israeli tank at the southern Gaza Strip fence east of Khan Younis, Oct. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Yousef Masoud)

Palestinians wave their national flag and celebrate by a destroyed Israeli tank at the southern Gaza Strip fence east of Khan Younis on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Yousef Masoud)

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Civilians killed by Palestinian militants lie covered in Sderot, Israel, on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip infiltrated Saturday into southern Israel and fired thousands of rockets into the country while Israel began striking targets in Gaza in response. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Police officers evacuate a woman and a child from a site hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip in Ashkelon, southern Israel, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

Palestinians and Hamas militants transport Yarden Bibas to Gaza after kidnapping him from his home in Nir Oz, a kibbutz in Israel near the Gaza border, on Oct. 7, 2023. Hamas militants stormed the border with Israel, killed over 1,200 Israelis, and took over 200 hostages. (AP Photo)

An Israeli firefighter kneels to compose himself after he and his colleagues extinguished cars set on fire by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip in Ashkelon, Israel, Monday, Oct. 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

An Israeli soldier walks by a house destroyed in fighting with by Hamas militants in kibbutz Be’eri on Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2023. The kibbutz was overrun by Hamas militants from the nearby Gaza Strip Saturday when they killed and captured many Israelis. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)

Fire and smoke rise following an Israeli airstrike, in Gaza City, Sunday, Oct. 8, 2023. The militant Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip carried out an unprecedented, multi-front attack on Israel at daybreak Saturday, firing thousands of rockets as dozens of Hamas fighters infiltrated the heavily fortified border in several locations, killing hundreds and taking captives. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

Palestinians inspect the rubble of destroyed buildings following Israeli airstrikes on the town of Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, Oct. 26, 2023. (AP Photo/Mohammed Dahman)

A Palestinian girl reacts as a child is carried from the rubble of a building after an airstrike in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Saturday, Oct. 21, 2023. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

Israelis evacuate a site struck by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip in Ashkelon, southern Israel, Monday, Oct. 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Palestinians inspect the rubble of the Yassin Mosque destroyed after it was hit by an Israeli airstrike at Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, early Monday, Oct. 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

Palestinians walk by the buildings destroyed in the Israeli bombardment on al-Zahra, on the outskirts of Gaza City, Friday, Oct. 20, 2023. (AP Photo/Ali Mahmoud)

An injured Palestinian boy cries as rescuers try to pull him out of the rubble of a destroyed building following an Israeli airstrike in Bureij refugee camp, Gaza Strip, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023. (AP Photo/Mohammed Dahman)

Palestinians are treated as they lie on the floor after being wounded in an Israeli army bombardment of the Gaza Strip, in the hospital in Khan Younis, Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2023. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

Rockets are fired from the Gaza Strip toward Israel over destroyed buildings following Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City, central Gaza Strip, Thursday, Oct. 19, 2023. (AP Photo/Mohammed Dahman)

An Israeli soldier hugs his partner near the border with the Gaza Strip, southern Israel, Friday, Oct. 20, 2023. The Israeli military has beefed up ground forces near the Gaza Strip ahead of an expected ground invasion as the latest war between Israel and Hamas militants completes its second week. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Israeli security forces inspect charred vehicles burned in the bloody Oct. 7 cross-border attack by Hamas militants outside the town of Netivot, southern Israel, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2023. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

An Israeli mobile artillery unit fires a shell from southern Israel towards the Gaza Strip, near the Israel-Gaza border, Monday, Nov. 06, 2023. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Israeli APC head towards the Gaza Strip border in southern Israel on Friday, Oct.13, 2023. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

Israeli troops walk in the Gaza Strip as seen from southern Israel, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2023. AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

An Israeli Apache helicopter fires flares over the Gaza Strip as seen from southern Israel, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2023. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

Palestinians wounded in Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip wait for treatment at a hospital in Khan Younis, Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2023. ( AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

Palestinians evacuate a building hit in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in Rafah on Sunday, Oct. 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Hatem Ali)

Israeli tanks head towards the Gaza Strip border in southern Israel on Thursday, Oct.12, 2023. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Palestinians flee to northern Gaza as Israeli tanks block the Salah al-Din road in the central Gaza Strip on Friday, Nov. 24, 2023, as the four-day cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war begins as part of an agreement that Qatar helped broker. (AP Photo/Mohammed Dahman)

Palestinians displaced by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip seek cover from a winter rainfall at a U.N. tent camp in the southern town of Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Sunday, Nov. 19, 2023. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled their homes in northern Gaza as Israel moves ahead with a ground offensive against the ruling Hamas militant group. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

Israelis embrace next to photos of people killed and taken captive by Hamas militants during their violent rampage through the Nova music festival in southern Israel, which are displayed at the site of the event near kibbutz Re’im, Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2023. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Mourners sit next to graffiti calling for the return of the hostages kidnapped during the Oct. 7 Hamas cross-border attack in Israel, outside the cemetery in Kfar Saba, Israel, Sunday, Nov. 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

A Red Cross vehicle carrying Israeli hostages drives by at the Gaza Strip crossing into Egypt in Rafah on Saturday, Nov. 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

People wave Israeli flags as a helicopter carrying hostages released from Gaza by Hamas arrives at the helipad of the Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Petah Tikva, Israel, Sunday, Nov. 26, 2023. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

An Israeli soldier looks at Palestinians fleeing south at Salah al-Din road in central Gaza Strip on Sunday, Nov. 26, 2023, on the third day of a temporary cease-fire between Hamas and Israel. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)

A Palestinian woman gestures following Israeli airstrikes in Khan Younis refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Mohammed Dahman)

Palestinians evacuate a wounded woman following Israeli airstrikes in Khan Younis refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Mohammed Dahman)

Palestinians wounded in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip arrive at a hospital in Khan Younis on Friday, Dec. 8, 2023. (AP Photo/Mohammed Dahman)

Kenzi al Madhoun, a four-year-old who was wounded in an Israeli bombardment, lies at Al Aqsa Hospital in Deir al Balah City, Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2023. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Israeli soldiers stand by a truck packed with bound and blindfolded Palestinian detainees in Gaza, Friday, Dec. 8, 2023. Israeli forces have been rounding up Palestinians in northern Gaza for interrogation as they search for Hamas fighters. (AP Photo/Moti Milrod, Haaretz)

Israeli soldiers take positions near the Gaza Strip border in southern Israel, Monday, Dec. 11, 2023. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT - Palestinians stand around the bodies of children killed in Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in a morgue in Khan Younis, Thursday, Oct. 19, 2023. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

An Israeli soldier stands in an apartment during a ground operation in the Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2023. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Palestinians mourn relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip outside a morgue in Khan Younis on Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2023. (AP Photo/Mohammed Dahman)

Mourners gather around the five coffins of the Kotz family during their funeral in Gan Yavne, Israel, Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. The family was killed by Hamas militants on Oct. 7 at their house in Kibbutz Kfar Azza near the border with the Gaza Strip, More than 1,400 people were killed and some 200 captured in an unprecedented, multi-front attack by the militant group that rules Gaza. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Palestinians pray over bodies of people killed in the Israeli bombardment who were brought from the Shifa hospital before burying them in a mass grave in the town of Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Mohammed Dahman)

Al Jazeera journalist Wael Dahdouh holds the hand of his son Hamza, who also worked for Al Jazeera and who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024. Dahdouh lost his wife, two other children, and a grandson earlier in the war and was nearly killed himself. (AP Photo/Hatem Ali)

Antonio Macías’ mother cries over her son’s body covered with the Israeli flag at Pardes Haim cemetery in Kfar Saba, near Tel Aviv, Israel, Sunday, Oct. 15, 2023. Macias was killed by Hamas militants while attending a music festival in southern Israel earlier this month. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Palestinians flee to the southern Gaza Strip on Salah al-Din Street in Bureij, Gaza Strip, Saturday, Nov. 11, 2023. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

A Palestinian family flee the Israeli ground offensive in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2023. (AP Photo/Mohammed Dahman)

Palestinians line up for a free meal in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2023. International aid agencies say Gaza is suffering from shortages of food, medicine, and other essential supplies as a result of the two-and-a-half-month war between Israel and Hamas. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

Palestinians displaced by the Israeli bombardment wait for their turn to bake bread at the makeshift tent camp in the Muwasi area in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Saturday, Dec. 23, 2023. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

A view of the makeshift tent camp where Palestinians displaced by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip are staying in the Muwasi area on Monday, Jan. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Hatem Ali)

JERUSALEM (AP) — Photographs of an unprecedented war between Israel and Hamas have captured 100 days of agony.

Scenes from Hamas’ surprise attack on a music festival, farming communities and army outposts in southern Israel are seared into the national psyche. The bloodied bodies of young men and women lying on a highway where they were gunned down. An older woman squeezed between two gunmen on a motorcycle while she is being taken to the Gaza Strip as a hostage.

Some 1,200 people were killed that day, Israel’s worst single loss of civilian lives. About 250 others were abducted. Some, mostly women and children, were eventually released or traded for Palestinian prisoners. Some were killed in captivity .

The pain endures for the families of more than 100 people still held hostage by Hamas. Street graffiti and public vigils keep their plight in Israelis’ minds. The shock from what happened on Oct. 7 has fueled a nationwide determination to carry through the military’s offensive in Gaza until Hamas is eliminated.

Every day in Gaza, Israel’s firing of rockets, artillery and missiles produce new images of Palestinian suffering and loss. Rescuers pull the body of a toddler out of the wreckage of a demolished building. Outside of a morgue, relatives weep over loved ones lined up on the pavement in white body bags — another family killed in the Israeli bombardment.

At the few hospitals still operating , wounded patients are treated on the floor. Many of them are children, bloody and crying in pain. Overwhelmed doctors struggle to treat them with an increasingly insufficient stock of medicines and other supplies.

In 100 days, the military’s relentless bombardment and ground assault has killed around more than 23,000 Palestinians — roughly 1% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people. The fighting has uprooted almost the entire population, most of it squeezed into the territory’s far south.

In the north, which was Israel’s first target, mountains of rubble fill the landscape . Much of Gaza City and surrounding districts have been leveled. Many residents who fled fear they’ll never be allowed to return, or if they are, their neighborhoods will be uninhabitable .

In parts of southern Gaza where Israel advised people to evacuate, rescuers dig through smoldering piles of concrete, stone and dust, looking for survivors of airstrikes and shelling. Tent camps have sprawled over any empty piece of land. Crowds mob distribution sites for food , with one in four people in Gaza starving under Israel’s siege of the territory.

And the war goes on. Israeli soldiers detonate entire blocks in Gaza, saying they are destroying Hamas tunnels . Hamas fires volleys of rockets into Israel. Israeli officials say their offensive will continue through 2024.

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