This book is an opportunity to see the reality of war through the eyes of a person accustomed to seeing beauty through the lens of his camera. Roman Zakrevskyi’s essays interweave his service experience and personal memories: about the siege and bombing of his hometown, about separation from loved ones, fear and fatigue, but also about the tenderness and fragile moments of humanity that are preserved even in a world poisoned by cruelty.
The author shows the path of a civilian who joins the army — the moment of making the decision, the road to the enlistment office, and the moment you see war up close. This is an honest reflection on doubts and choices, responsibility, and loss.
About the author
Roman Zakrevskyi is a photographer, videographer, and war correspondent. Born in Chernihiv in 1986.
He began work as a photographer in 2005, and his photos have been part of exhibitions in Kyiv, Chernihiv, Donetsk, Lviv, and abroad. Before the full-scale war, he shot documentary and feature films, and worked as a videographer for the Chernihiv branch of Ukraine’s public broadcaster.
In 2022, Roman Zakrevskyi’s photo of a shelled residential building in Chernihiv appeared on the front page of The New York Times. In 2023, he joined the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Reviews
At the center is a soldier with an absolutely non-military background: in civilian life, he is an artist, a father, someone with a very delicate feel for the world. For four years now, he has been doing something he would never have done in a normal world, but he does it because he must.
Myroslav Laiuk, writer
This book is about that experience. But it is important that this is not a typical military story: we usually expect a catalog of cruelty, a detachment from everything tender and frank from these kinds of books. Here, on the contrary, tenderness, sincerity, openness, and even a certain naivety are placed first.
This is the strength of the book: it does not try to give political assessments or delve into reflections on cultural identity. It simply shows how a soldier experiences war — not a general, but someone who simply, like thousands of others, faces daily risks to his life — very privately and very humanly.
