
A Keswick photographer has won a prestigious award for his photos capturing Ukrainian refugees in the midst of the war.
Tim Fisher won the Silver Award in the Fine Art, Portraiture section of the International Photography Awards for his “Ukrainian Refugee Bed Spaces” photoset. The competition celebrates the world’s finest photographers.
It comes alongside his further success in the Prix de la Photographie, Paris, one of the most renowned photography awards in Europe, in which he has won a Bronze Award in the Fine Art, Landscape section.
Tim travelled to Ukraine in April as part of a humanitarian aid run, where he met refugees camped out at the Ukraine border and learned their often horrific stories of survival.
As well as bringing much-needed supplies, he also packed his photographic equipment, intending to create a “first person testimony” of the refugee camps on the northern Ukraine border.
He said: “As a professional photographer with hundreds of thousands of hours of practice, reading and so many failures in my wake, I now expect to have some measure of success and recognition because I’ve put in the time, the effort, the money, to do so.
“When you receive some recognition from international jury panels, then you know you’re on the right track with your project. It adds validity and provenance to one’s art.”
In April, Tim, who runs the Northern Lights Gallery in Keswick, set out for Germany in a camper van and joined his Russian-speaking wife Suzanne, who works for a Munich-based humanitarian charity.
Having been granted permission to cross into Ukraine, Tim set up a makeshift studio in a school in Perechyn, close to the Slovakian border, where he was given access to ordinary people who had fled from the war zones in Kyiv and Kharkiv.
He said: “You’d have a family of six – including kids, grandparents, dogs and cats – who had been huddled together in a cellar for two weeks while the Russians bombed their homes. Then, when the shelling finally stopped, they would have to step over the bodies of the dead piled up outside.
In Ukraine this evening.
— Tim Fisher Photography (@timfisher46) April 1, 2022
.
Up in the hills.
.
Air raid sirens, i’ve heard them before when I served in Germany as they tested the air raid system weekly.
.#UkraineRussiaWar #Ukraine️ #airraidalarm #WARINUKRAINE #WAR pic.twitter.com/PbR2x8drmf
“Nothing can prepare you for that, yet these people were just amazingly stoic about their experiences. The Ukrainians are incredibly tough, but at the same time I wonder about the long-term effects on the children especially.”
He described seeing young children cheerfully drawing pictures of Russian tanks in crayon. He added: “It really brought home to me that this is what they have been seeing. These are people just like you and I, but who through no fault of their own are living in extraordinary circumstances. What struck me was how determined they were to make the best of the situation and try to lead as normal life as possible.”
Tim aims to return to Ukraine with his wife soon to continue providing humanitarian aid and photographing the country.