Over the past three years, London-based photographer Mark Neville has been travelling around Ukraine to work on several wide-ranging projects: one about holidaymakers in Odessa, another about people at worship, and an extensive series depicting the 2 million people in the country displaced by conflict on the eastern front. His latest project saw him documenting folk songs, often sung by internally displaced Ukrainians. “What happens when a country is at war is that people tend to identify more directly with the symbolism of what their country culturally stands for,” he explains. “So that means a lot of people returning to things such as national costume, a focus on the core elements of being Ukrainian.”
The Guardian: National pride flourishes amid war in Ukraine
People wearing vyshyvankas, the traditional Ukrainian embroidered blouses, hold Ukrainian flags during the Vyshyvankas March in Kyiv on May 19, 2018.
