| Three years ago, Mark Peckmezian made vibrant portraits of youths on the streets of Kyiv and Odesa. “Now there’s nothing in the future,” one says.  Alina and Varvara. Photographs by Mark Peckmezian “When it was taken, this portrait was foreign to me—I looked at it and didn’t see myself,” Alina, who fled Kyiv for the western city of Lviv at the start of the Russian invasion, says. “It’s from the past, but it seems to be from the future. Now this girl looks more like me than she did then. I’ve always tried to be strong, but in the photo I see fear and uncertainty.” The writer Sophie Pinkham was able to contact eleven young people who were the subjects of Mark Peckmezian’s stunning photographs from Ukraine, taken between 2017 and 2020, which capture the beauty and openness of youth. “At that time, everything made sense,” Varvara, who got a flight to the Netherlands, but whose husband and father have stayed behind to fight in the city of Dnipro, says. “If Mark took my photo now, no one would recognize me.”  Others describe similar physical and psychological displacement—combined with immense grief and fear. Nikita’s family, along with several others, is staying with his aunt, in western Ukraine, where they “sit in the basement making camouflage nets from old military linens.” Vanya’s father drove him and his six-year-old brother to the Polish border. They had to walk most of the final miles—and then his father turned around and returned to Ukraine. “During this whole experience, my brother never cried,” Vanya says. “He’s a hero. I’m so glad that he’s so strong.” —Ian Crouch, newsletter editor | 
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