You might remember Mark Neville — the British ex-pat who moved to Ukraine shortly after the 2014 war in Crimea. He says he fell in love with the country, as well as the Ukrainian woman he would soon marry. Since then, he’s used his camera lens to document the lives of Ukrainians, including some of the 2.5 million people displaced by the earlier war.
It was his fear of new war that inspired his first book, “Stop Tanks with Books,” a stunning collection of photographs of Ukrainians. He sent the volume to 750 world leaders, hoping to bring attention to the region and just maybe prevent a new war.
Ironically, the book was released just as the new Russian incursion into Ukraine began. A week later, Neville and his wife Lukeriia were forced to flee their home in Kyiv, joining a million others as refugees first in Poland and then in western Europe. But the pull of Ukraine, his adopted home, was too strong and Neville returned to Kyiv, eventually convincing his wife to join him.