John Moore, Special News Correspondent, Getty Images: By the time I arrived to Ukraine in April, the conflict was into its second month. Even by then, many Ukrainians were starting to worry that the world might forget about them and their suffering. By and large, Ukrainians are extremely welcoming to international photojournalists, especially American ones like me, telling their story. They want us there to document these terrible atrocities, so that the world, and history, will never forget.
Another unique aspect of working in Ukraine are the dangers. In this conflict, the main danger is shrapnel from shelling, especially for photographers working in frontline areas. In Afghanistan and Iraq, there was the major risk of kidnapping, which isn’t so much the case in Ukraine, which has more defined front lines.
Chris McGrath, Chief News Photographer, Getty Images: I think the biggest difference of this war is that it is very much a modern high-tech war. The use of technology, such as drones and precision weaponry, make it difficult to photograph, as these don’t really make much of a photograph, so everything we are shooting is mainly aftermath rather than the actual event occurring.
However, every war is the same in the fact that the result is the same — pointless, needless death. This is what stands out emotionally for me. Repeatedly, I have photographed scenes of civilian deaths, where people have just been doing very normal daily life tasks, like going to the grocery store, and then are hit by random shelling and killed for absolutely no reason. These images are very hard to take, and they’re hard to come to terms with afterwards, when you start to put your own family, your own friends in that situation. So, for me that’s been a big issue to deal with.
Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/kennethbachor/heartbreaking-images-ukraine
