Svitanok — Dawn

The darkest night comes just before dawn: the moment when there is no strength left to keep living, to do what must be done, what you want, what you lack.

When the third year of a ten-year war — a war that has lasted for centuries — is drawing to a close, and you realise that even your every effort may not be enough. When it seems that not even our descendants will clear the darkness of this struggle, when fatigue covers every cell of your body so completely that it seems to be who you are.

A moment of despair in which nothing is visible. When you do not know whether there will be light, whether warmth will come. When you learn to live with the thought of defeat. When you grow used to death.

The darkest, most frightening moment is when war becomes ordinary. And it is in exactly these moments that we need light more than anything.

This collection is about how, in hard times, we learn to find the strength and courage within ourselves to keep living and to resist difficult circumstances and the horrors around us.