Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, Bukreyeva has been living in her mother’s house. The war has changed what common things mean: her mother’s basement is now a rocket shelter. When she fled her apartment, she only took with her identification cards, her dogs and some photography equipment. She says that on the third day of sheltering in the basement, she realised that the periodicity of her days had dissolved into one long, continuous moment. So, she began to keep a journal. Her series 2402. War Diary. provides a haunting roadmap of the war’s course, tying together both image and writing.
For much of the world, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine seemingly came as a surprise. Foreign news outlets and politicians portrayed Russia’s belligerence as mere theatre. They were wrong. For her series Magma, Bukreyeva walked through Kyiv with a red filter over her flash. She says that since 2014, many Ukrainians understood the threat of invasion, but could not fully believe it. But when, in 2021, Russian troops began circling her nation’s border, and the global community turned a blind eye, she sought to capture her anxiety and fear with photography. The red stained images represent the magma that was beginning to surface as lava; the ground beneath our feet can be far less stable than we hope.