Kyiv 2025 # Lilac addiction (Patreon)

This series comes from my trip to Ukraine, to Kyiv, right after Gary proposed to me.

And if I’m being honest, I really wanted to go there specifically for lilac season. I know lilacs blooming are not exactly the most reasonable reason to travel to Ukraine during wartime, but unfortunately I have never claimed to be a reasonable woman. Being so far away from home, from my family, from my friends and from everything familiar had become really hard for me. So I packed my bags, ignored common sense just a little, and went.

And honestly, the memories are beautiful. A beautiful home, beautiful nature, friends, parents. It was a very full trip. And I’m endlessly grateful to my fiancé for always supporting my wishes, even when they are not the most timely, logical or convenient ones)

At the same time, this was the first trip during the full-scale war when I truly felt fear for my life.

No matter how many times I had come back to Ukraine before, no matter how many times I had stayed there for a month or two between modeling trips, I had never felt it like this. This was the first time I felt fear not just as a physical reaction in my body, but as an actual emotion inside myself.

And that was very strange for me.

Because my emotions often show up through my body, but not always as something I can clearly feel and name. My body usually speaks for me first: nausea, stomach cramps, dizziness, sweaty palms, racing heart. Very dramatic, very committed to the performance. The emotion is there, but I don’t always meet it directly.

This time I did.

For the first time, I felt fear itself. Fear of dying. Fear for Gary. And it was such a strange mix of emotions, because along with the fear there was also some kind of joy - joy that I was finally feeling it not only through my body, but emotionally too. As if something inside me had opened, or finally allowed itself to come through in a different way.

And now, looking back at these photographs, it almost makes me laugh that I’m telling you all of this darkness while the images themselves are full of lilacs, my parents’ house, friends, flowers, shopping, shoots, food, concerts, festivals… and my mother baking a birthday cake for Gary.

And maybe that’s exactly what Ukraine is to me right now.

Right next to death, right next to fear, right next to war - lilacs are blooming, my mother is baking a cake for my fiancé, we’re smelling flowers, seeing friends, photographing with Ruslan Lobanov, going to concerts, and simply living our lives.

The worst and the best exist here at the same time.

And there is something deeply painful, deeply strange, but also deeply beautiful in that.

Maybe that’s why these photographs feel so special to me now. Because when there is constant danger somewhere nearby, every image suddenly carries more weight. More emotion. More importance. They feel denser somehow, more alive, more precious than they would in peaceful life.

And maybe that’s exactly why I wanted to come for the lilacs so badly.