In the weeks that followed Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, forcing millions to flee the country carrying their bare essentials through the snow, photographer Polly Braden flew to Moldova, on the south-west border. She spent her time there building relationships with people, asking if they wanted to be part of something long-term. “I am more interested in telling one story for a long time than a lot of stories quickly,” she says.
Braden’s previous project, Holding the Baby, had been about single parents. When the Ukrainian refugee crisis hit, says Braden, “as a single parent [myself], I was seeing all these women essentially become single parents, but also carrying grandparents, maybe a niece or other children, too. I imagined the enormity of what that was going to mean, having to get their kids to school, find work and homes, negotiate local bureaucracy – that takes single parenting to a whole other level.”
The resulting exhibition at the Foundling Museum in London documents the lives of several of these women and children over a tumultuous two years, as they became increasingly scattered across Europe.
Lena, 21, was a law graduate from Mykolaiv, a city in the south-west of Ukraine, and part of a group of 16 sharing a room that included three grandparents and her mum. “She had trained to be a lawyer,” says Braden, “and suddenly, all she had to do was scroll through the news. She had a lot of guilt about having to leave, when all her male friends had to stay.”
After a few months, Moldova started to feel dangerous so Lena and her mother – a sign-language interpreter on the news in Ukraine – decided to move on. Her mother wanted to go to Italy, where she had some contacts. Lena, who was fluent in English, went to stay with Braden under the Homes for Ukraine scheme. She got a job at a law firm, and there’s a photograph of her around that time sitting pensively on the bus, caught in a sliver of sunlight. “I feel like I’m in Sex and the City,” she told Braden. But her situation was too complex to be a fairytale ending. “She felt so much pressure to succeed because she had all this opportunity,” says Braden. Her mother is now back in Ukraine, doing her old job.
Another compelling story centres on three 15-year-old girls – Sofiia, Aliesia and Yuliia – who had been at the same school in Mykolaiv. All across Europe, Ukrainian schools offered online learning. “They were working in different time zones,” says Braden. “Teachers might also have been abroad with their kids, or in Ukraine and when the bomb sirens were going off, they would have to go down to the basement, trying to stay online.”
Braden captures the girls daydreaming, looking at their phones, and a room in Krakow full of bunk beds with a kitchenette at the end. This was where Aliesia had ended up after a protracted overland journey to Spain, staying in refugee camps along the way. But the plan to stay with a relative there didn’t work out so they returned to Krakow. In Krakow, her mother and aunt got cleaning jobs in a hotel but after their permitted 90 rent-free days ran out, they couldn’t afford to pay for the room. They went back to Mykolaiv where Aliesia finished school last July and is now at a Kyiv university, although she can’t physically be there because the dormitories are full of displaced people.
Her friend Sofiia started out in Poland and went to school there for four months. “Her mum was earning money at a factory, working nights, [to support] two kids from their village, a niece, Sofiia and a grandmother,” says Braden. “She got bad problems with her legs and her breathing. She had a cousin in Switzerland, and decided to drive there and start again.” Six months later, Sofiia was still doing online learning, which was taking its toll. “She is very gregarious, usually forms big friendship groups and she got really depressed,” says Braden. Despite this, she learned German and got into a gymnasium – “one of the top Swiss schools.”
Yuliia, the third girl in the group, started off in Bulgaria with her mum and grandparents. They stayed with some friends but her paternal grandfather didn’t have a passport which meant that after 90 days, they had to leave. They went to Warsaw, where Yuliia continued with online learning. “She told me she used to go and cry in the bathroom, and that she didn’t know how to make friends any more,” says Braden. Yuliia is now enrolled in film studies at the University of Warsaw, where she has made new friends.
Last summer, the three girls reunited in Ukraine for prom. “They got dressed up in prom dresses and recorded themselves, and that’s going to be part of a film in the show that will bring them to life and let them speak for themselves.” Braden has two teenage children herself and says the real joy of working with this age group is that even when “they have complex emotions, and massive things happening, they’re still teenagers and they want to talk about boyfriends, they want friendships, they want touch and they need all the things that young people need. They live in the present.”