Fighters and mourners of the Ukrainian revolution

When I arrived in Kiev,

on the first of February this year,

Independence Square
was under siege,

surrounded by police
loyal to the government.

The protestors who
occupied Maidan,

as the square's known,

prepared for battle.

Stockpiling homemade weapons and
mass-producing improvised body armor.

The EuroMaidan protests
began peacefully

at the end of 2013

after the president of Ukraine,
Viktor Yanukovych,

rejected a far-reaching accord
with the European Union

in favor with stronger
ties with Russia.

In response, tens of thousands
of dissatisfied citizens

poured into central Kiev

to demonstrate against
this allegiance.

As the months passed,

confrontations between police
and civilians intensified.

I set up a makeshift
portrait studio

by the barricades on (name) street.

There, I photographed the
fighters against a black curtain,

a curtain that obscured the highly
seductive and visual backdrop

of fire, ice and smoke.

In order to tell the individual
human stories here,

I felt that I needed to
remove the dramatic visuals

that had become so
familiar and repetitive

within the mainstream media.

What I was witnessing
was not only news,

but also history.

With this realization,

I was free from the
photojournalistic conventions

of the newspaper and
the magazine.

(names of people) were all ordinary men,

with ordinary lives from ordinary towns.

But the elaborate costumes that they
had bedecked themselves in

were quite extraordinary

I say the word "costume" because

these were not clothes that had been
issued or coordinated by anyone.

They were improvised uniforms

made up of decommissioned
military equipment:

irregular combat fatigues and trophies
taken from the police.

I became interested in the way they
were choosing to represent themselves,

this outward expression of masculinity,

the ideal of the warrior.

I worked slowly, using
an analog film camera

with a manual focusing loop
and a handheld light meter.

The process is old fashioned.

It gives me time to speak
with each person

and to look at them in silence

while they look back at me.

Rising tensions culminated
in the worst day of violence

on the 20th of February,

which became known as
Bloody Thursday.

Snippers, loyal to the government,

started firing on the civilians and the
protestors in Institutskaya street.

Many were killed in a
very short space of time.

The reception of the Hotel Ukraina
became a makeshift morge.

There were lines of
bodies laid in the street.

And there was blood
all over the pavements.

The following day,

President Yanukovych fled Ukraine.

In all, three months of protests

resulted in more than 120 confirmed dead.

and many more missing.

History unfolded quickly,

but celebration remained
elusive in Maidan.

As the days passed in
Kiev's central square,

streams of armed fighters

were joined by tens and
thousands of ordinary people

filling the streets in an act
of collective mourning.

Many were women who
often carried flowers

that they had brought to lay as
marks of respect for the dead.

They came day after day

and they covered the square
with millions of flowers.

Sadness enveloped Maidan.

It was quiet and I could
hear the birds singing.

I hadn't heard that before.

I stopped women as they
approached the barracades

to lay their tributes and
asked to make their picture.

Most women cried when I
photographed them.

On the first day, my fixer
Emine and I cried

with almost every woman
who visited our studio.

There had been such a
noticeable absence of women

up until that point.

And the color of their pastel coats,

their shiny handbags,

and the bunches of red carnations,

white tulips and yellow roses

that they carried jarred with
the blackened square

and the blackened men
who were encamped there.

It is clear to me that these
two sets of pictures

don't make much
sense without the other.

They are about men and women
and the way we are

-- not the way we look, but the
way we are.

They speak about different
gender roles in conflict,

not only in Maidan and
not only in Ukraine.

Men fight most wars and
women mourn them.

If the men showed the
ideal of the warrior,

then the women showed the
implications of such violence.

When I made these pictures,

I believed that I was documenting
the end of violent events in Ukraine.

But now I understand that it is
a record of the beginning.

Today, the death toll
stands around 3,000,

while hundreds of thousands
have been displaced.

I was in Ukraine again six weeks ago.

In Maidan, the barricades
have been dismantled

and the paving stones which we used
as weapons during the protests

replaced so that traffic flows freely
through the center of the square.

The fighters, the women
and the flowers are gone.

A huge billboard depicting geese
flying over a wheat field

covers the burnt-out shell of the
trade union's building

and proclaims,

"Glory to Ukraine.

Glory to heroes."

Thank you.

(Applause).