“People were forced to flee from the War. Now they have lost the emotional platform to sustain themselves,” said Dmytro, a volunteer I met at the relief centre for Ukrainians seeking refuge set up inside the Rzeszow train station, about 100 kilometres away from the Poland–Ukraine border. Speaking for the Ukrainian people, he told me, “They thought of evacuating just for a few days, but it has been prolonged to one week, two weeks, and now it is almost a month.” 

The war is making their future harshly uncertain and unpredictable, destroying all the backbones and anchors they need more than ever to cope with the anxiety and fear. The evacuees suffer from various physical hardships and are left in mental torment. They have the nagging and increasing worry about the safety of their family, relatives, and friends, as they feel tortured by the guilty conscience from being in a safe place. They are torn between hope and despair, between whether they could go back to their hometown or lose it. Even after they physically crossed the border, their hearts are still hovering over the boundary of uncertainty, roaming back and forth between this side and the other side. 

From March 14 to 24, 2022, Roman, my coordinator, and I visited Warsaw and many other places in Poland to reach the town on the border of Poland and Ukraine. I took photographs over ninety people and interviewed. Some of them were on their way to their next destination, staying just a few hours to get some rest. At a large refugee centre where busses were arriving from EU countries, we met parents and children finding a temporary shelter for a few nights. Others were moving to apartments or hotels, their temporary places to stay. A mother and her child were standing in the long queue to register for a school. 

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The war in Ukraine has already caused the worst refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War. This photo book collects the small pieces of individual stories each person shared with us at each particular moment on their way amid the invasion.  

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The project consists of one hardcover photo book and two booklets with original print.  Obara tries to approach the current ongoing war from a journalist and a friend of Ukraine who became refugees and soldiers.