Your Florida Daily: Sarasota photographer captures faces of resistance amid Ukraine war

Allan Mestel had extensive experience photographing humanitarian crises, but he says his first day near the Poland/Ukraine border was unlike anything he’d seen before.

Just two weeks earlier, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Families — mostly women and children — who just days earlier had been living normal lives were now refugees forced to leave their homes, husbands, brothers and sons behind.

“I’ve spent a lot of time photographing migrants, usually migrants and refugees who are fleeing violence and poverty,” Mestel told News 6 producer Katrina Scales in a recent episode of Your Florida Daily.

“But in those populations... there’s a sense of hope. But [here] there was none of that. This was clearly a shell-shocked refugee population who were in absolute disbelief about what was happening.”

Mestel, a studio photographer based just outside Bradenton, Florida, spent most of his career in the advertising business in Toronto directing TV commercials.

His work documenting his war photography and portraits are on display for an exhibition at the Lexow Gallery, Unitarian Universalists of Sarasota from March 15 through April 19.

In March 2022, Mestel landed in Medyka, Ukraine, with his camera in hand and captured the mass exodus of citizens fleeing to nearby countries.

“It was all women and children almost 90% because the men were actually prevented from leaving. So there was tremendous sadness,” Mestel said.

On his second trip to Ukraine, in July 2022, Mestel saw a different picture. The country was on a war footing.

“The air raid alerts were constant. Everyday rocket fire.”

After one particular air raid that destroyed a hotel and an apartment building, Mestel used the help of a contact to visit the hospital where survivors of the attack were being treated.

There, he saw young people with horrifying injuries.

“They were 20-year-old kids who had been there for a graduation party,” Mestel said. “They were all suffering from disfiguring shrapnel injuries. One kid in particular — his face was just a complete mess from shrapnel.”

Despite what the students had just been through, Mestel said they seemed to be in high spirits and almost defiant in their hope and resilience. He captured their faces, contusions and all, with his camera.

Mestel’s photography – especially his portraits – have a very emotional quality.

Looking at the faces of everyday Ukrainian civilians and soldiers, you can practically feel their fear, anger, grief and spirit.

When asked how he communicates to his subjects before photographing them, Mestel said it usually starts with a non-verbal interaction that affords him permission to snap a photo.

“My intent with the work I do is to attempt to create an image that a viewer can feel a sense of proximity, a sense of connection, a sense of empathy for the individual that I’m photographing,” Mestel said.

“No matter what I do, I always try to shoot eye-to-eye. If somebody’s sitting, I’ll get down on the ground or just get down on my belly because I want to have that sense of being directly in front of that person as much as possible looking into their eyes.”

During one trip in a village close to the Russian border, Mestel met up with a Ukrainian firefighter who agreed to bring him to their station to snap some photos.

What he saw later that day, Mestel says, will stay with him forever. The firefighter drove him to an opening in a nearby forest where mounds of dirt could be seen in every direction.

“All around us 360 degrees were open graves. I subsequently learned there was 439 of these graves,” Mestel said. “That was the site of a massive execution where the Russians had marched almost 500 people into the forest executed them and just buried them.”

When the village was retaken, Ukrainians exhumed the graves and made attempts to identify each body, though, many are only marked with numbers.

“The fact that in 2023, it would have been, that people could still be marched into the woods and shot in the back of the head and buried in unmarked graves — civilians, people, children, women — for no for no other reason than simply for existing,” Mestel said.

Between the funerals and the Russian shelling, there are incredible people who are risking their lives to help sustain the Ukrainian civilians who chose to stay behind.

One of those hero groups is Ukrainian Patriot.

The nonprofit group was started by Lana Niland, who owned a dance studio in Kiev and recruited volunteers to deliver life-saving supplies to war-torn areas of Ukraine.

“They’re not getting any medals for what they’re doing, but they are putting themselves in harm’s way just to try to bring humanitarian aid to people who desperately needed it,” Mestel said.

He tells News 6 he plans to join Ukraine Patriot after another photography mission to the Ukraine in May.

Mestel shares more stories about resilient brave volunteers working to help others amid the war, including a young woman who set up a rescue for abandoned or lost animals in Ukraine.

“It was called ‘ARK,’ Animal Rescue Kharkiv... I saw one shelter where there were 250 cats in this basement area. They told me they rescued over 11,000 animals. They went into the combat zone, risking their lives breaking into apartments rescuing these animals, cats, dogs, fish — they even took fish! They had fish tanks and would come with a bucket,” Mestel said.

To listen to the full interview, listen to the episode of Your Florida Daily at the top of this article or anywhere you get your podcasts.

Allan Mestel’s full catalogue of work can be found on his website.