Along the Dnipro, the river that runs through the middle of Ukraine, Eugenia Skvarska and Kalpesh Lathigra made Unofficial Dnipro, a record of two summer road trips from Kyiv to Zaporizhzhia.
The Dnipro runs roughly 2,200 kilometres through the middle of Ukraine, and Eugenia Skvarska and Kalpesh Lathigra followed it by road across the summers of 2023 and 2024, the first stretch begun while Skvarska was studying at Central Saint Martins. They travelled from Kyiv south to Zaporizhzhia and stopped there. Beyond it lie the frontlines, occupied territory, and the dam Russia destroyed in 2023, so the river to the Black Sea was closed to them.
There was no fixed brief. Skvarska and Lathigra photographed whatever the river passed: willow trees, ferry terminals, watermelons, swimmers, swan motifs, pavilions, industrial plant, improvised beaches. The result is a portrait of a region during an invasion that declines to let the invasion be the whole subject. It looks instead at people who keep swimming in the river through the summer, and at the ordinary life that continues alongside the war rather than in place of it.
That decision sits close to how Skvarska understands the river itself. She describes the Dnipro as "a symbol of the nation, almost like a grandfather figure," a presence older and steadier than the moment it is being photographed in. The 38 colour photographs hold to that register, watching the water and the people around it without turning either into an argument.
