Immigrant Diaries

Immigrant Diaries
Meet Sasha.
Sasha is one of the characters from my past life — a time when I was calmly doing what I loved, in what now feels like a very distant pre-COVID world.
I want to briefly tell you about her.
As far as I remember, Sasha was always into music. She sang beautifully and occasionally did photography in different places. She used to call a 50mm lens simply a “portrait lens.” It was with her that I shot my very first music video, which gained over half a million views — a cover of “Leila.”
At some point, Sasha moved to Hungary, shortly before the war started back home. But she had to put both music and photography on hold. Immigration is a complicated process, often quite depressing, and it doesn’t really matter who you are — 99% of the stories are very similar.
But this is no longer just Sasha’s story.
Since 2022, millions of Ukrainians have been forced to leave their homes. Across Europe alone, more than 4–5 million Ukrainian refugees are currently under temporary protection. Countries like Poland, Germany, and the Czech Republic have taken in the largest numbers.
In Canada, over 900,000 Ukrainians applied for emergency travel programs, and hundreds of thousands arrived to start over — often from zero.
Behind these numbers are lives paused, careers interrupted, identities put on hold.
A singer becomes a factory worker.
A photographer becomes a cleaner.
An engineer drives deliveries.
There’s a quiet pattern in these stories: people don’t just lose their homes — they lose the version of themselves they used to be.
Now Sasha is waking up again. After working six years at a factory — a place I’m sure she never imagined herself being — she slowly started returning to photography. She’s actually pretty good at it.

And she’s not alone.