shashasha

British artist Mark Neville’s new photobook “Stop Tanks With Books” is an urgent call to the international community to support Ukraine in its fight against the ongoing Russian invasion.

Neville, who moved to Ukraine in 2021 and has been documenting the country since 2015, opens his book with a clear and well-argued Call to Action even before the photographic series begin. While mostly serious in tone, Neville’s subjects cover a wide range – from holidaymakers in Odessa to partying youth at Rhythm Büro events, Roma communities on the shared border with Hungary, Ukrainian soldiers on the frontlines, displaced families from Crimea, churchgoers, and children in a special needs school. With the ongoing crisis, each of the images takes on a different layer of meaning, and often the context introduced by the plainly stated captions is enough to tell whole stories.

In addition to the more than eighty photographs, “Stop Tanks With Books” also includes information researched by the Berlin-based Center of Eastern European Studies, a long introduction by the artist, and eight short stories by writer Lyuba Yakimchuk about the war (all text included in Ukrainian and in English).

“Principles only mean something if you stick by them when they are inconvenient. This war has to end, and we all have a responsibility to call out aggressive imperialism, no matter if it is American, British, or, as it is here, Russian.”
― from Mark Neville’s introduction