Award of Excellence: The Shelter of Hope
A series of photographs that reflects a strong sense of identity or narrative. Respect for the dignity of the person is important.
"I'm Berezovskyy Viacheslav Vasyliovych. I am a computer programmer in Kharkiv. There are 4 people in my family; me, my wife Lena, my 9-year-old daughter Dasha and my son Georgiy, who is a student at the Kharkiv National Radioelectronic University. The war caught us at our home on February 24. We were woken up by strong explosions around 5:00 a.m . I was very afraid for my loved ones. We went to the shelter where we will stay for a week with my wife and daughter. On the 28th of February, our garden was bombed by a plane. Miraculously, no one died. All the windows of the houses were broken. A rocket hit the pole next to the house, burning a nearby car. I sent my wife and daughter to Germany. My son stayed in Kharkiv. I am in Lviv. I am Russian and my wife is also Russian. Maybe that fascist is me.''
The Shelter of Hope
The Rusian-Ukrainian war officially started with the entry of Russian troops into the country following the Russian airstrike against Ukraine on February 24. With the start of the war, people began to come to Lviv from cities where the war was most severe, such as Kyiv, Kramatorsk, Kharkiv, Bucha and Mariupol. While some of the victims of war, Ukrainians, who reached millions in a very short time, migrated to neighboring countries, others began to wait for the day they could return to their homes in the shelters allocated for them in Lviv. One of these shelters is the gym located in Stryiskyi Park of Lviv Polytechnic University, which provides 7-day shelter. In the limited conditions of the hall, about three hundred war victims are hosted for a week until they find another place or a place is arranged for them. The common dreams of these hundreds of people, who set out from different places with common reasons, common fears and sorrows, is that the war will end as soon as possible and that they can return to their homes and loved ones whom they hope are still alive. The areas where young people trained with joy and enthusiasm before the war, now host people whose eyes are filled with joy, sadness, longing, fear, hatred and anger, who still cannot believe how they saved themselves from the black hole called war. When I got there, all I could do was listen to those who wanted to tell their stories and try to explain it with photos.
