Carolyn Drake A coal miner in the locker room after his work shift at Progress Mine in the town of Torez. Torez was once a flourishing coal mining town. Under communism, miners' salaries were among the highest i (...)
n the Soviet Union and miners were seen as national heroes. But since Ukrainian independence the coal industry has attracted little government investment. The mines here are deep and extraction unprofitable. With many mines in disrepair, safety has become an issue. Scores of them have been closed, leaving many miners jobless. Torez, Donetsk, Ukraine. 2006. © Carolyn Drake | Magnum Photos
Carolyn Drake A young orphan waits in her classroom with nothing to do in the Petrokhiv Children's Building. There are over 100,000 children residing in government institutions in Ukraine today. The majority of (...)
them are social orphans, children whose parents are unavailable due to drug and alcohol abuse and the resultant hardships. Eighty girls between the ages of 5 and 25 live in near isolation in the Petrokhiv Children's building, a Soviet institution built in the 1960s to house girls with mental disabilities. With the facility understaffed, there are few planned activities, and little preparation for their release at the age of 25. Petrokhiv, Ukraine. 2006. © Carolyn Drake | Magnum Photos
Carolyn Drake A pensioner picks wild berries for tea from the forest. Volhynia, in the Northwest corner of present day Ukraine, is one of the oldest and most rural Slavic settlements in Europe. Villagers here st (...)
ill live off the land, picking wild mushrooms in the forests, growing vegetables on former collective farms, and raising livestock. While cultural traditions persist, opportunities for employment remain grim, over fifteen years after the fall of the Soviet Union. Volhynia, Pohulianka, Ukraine. 2006. © Carolyn Drake | Magnum Photos
Carolyn Drake Pensioner friends walk home after a birthday party in their neighborhood. Torez was once a flourishing coal mining town. Under communism, miners' salaries were among the highest in the Soviet Union (...)
and miners were seen as national heroes. But since Ukrainian independence the coal industry has attracted little government investment. The mines here are deep and extraction unprofitable. With many mines in disrepair, safety has become an issue. Scores of them have been closed, leaving many miners jobless. Torez, Donetsk, Ukraine. 2006. © Carolyn Drake | Magnum Photos
Carolyn Drake UKRAINE. Pohulianka, Volhynia. 2006. A horse pulls a wagon of food home from the family garden during a rainstorm. Volhynia, in the Northwest corner of present day Ukraine, is one of the oldest and (...)
most rural Slavic settlements in Europe. Villagers here still live off the land, picking wild mushrooms in the forests, growing vegetables on former collective farms, and raising livestock. While cultural traditions persist, opportunities for employment remain grim, over fifteen years after the fall of the Soviet Union. © Carolyn Drake | Magnum Photos
Carolyn Drake A widow living alone stands in her home in front of a table of keepsakes. Volhynia, in the Northwest corner of present day Ukraine, is one of the oldest and most rural Slavic settlements in Europe. (...)
Villagers here still live off the land, picking wild mushrooms in the forests, growing vegetables on former collective farms, and raising livestock. While cultural traditions persist, opportunities for employment remain grim, over fifteen years after the fall of the Soviet Union. Volhynia, Pohulianka, Ukraine. 2006. © Carolyn Drake | Magnum Photos
Carolyn Drake A Crimean Tatar woman watches boys from her village play football while waiting for her cows to return from the fields in the village of Serebrianka. About 250,000 Crimean Tatars, a Turkic group of (...)
Sunni Muslims, have returned to their homeland since the fall of the Soviet Union. Their families were forcibly deported in 1944. Serebrianka, Ukraine. 2006. © Carolyn Drake | Magnum Photos
Carolyn Drake Lunchtime in rural Volhynia in the northwest corner of Ukraine. Volhynia is one of the oldest and most rural Slavic settlements in Europe. The region's thick forests, flooding marshes and feeble ro (...)
ads make the terrain remote and difficult to access. Villagers rely on the land for survival, picking wild mushrooms and berries in the forests, growing vegetables on former collective farms and raising livestock, but the lure of city jobs attracts much of the area's youth, causing villages to be depleted.Volhyn, Ukraine. 2006. © Carolyn Drake | Magnum Photos