Railways in Ukraine

A visual publication that reveals the Ukrainian railway as a formative part of the Ukrainian landscape and shows the viewer its not always obvious beauty.

Passenger service, cargo logistics, industrial power, tourist attraction. The railway has always stitched together the regions of our country, united people, made travel possible and delivered important cargo.

The large-format photos of Mykola Oleksienko — a railway fan, photographer and trainspotter, and now a military man — and the short captions to them invite not only to consider the trains, tracks and nature around them. They encourage us to think about how the railway has influenced the portrait of an entire country. How the railway has gradually shaped and expressed the images of different regions of Ukraine from a geographical, historical and cultural perspective. What the largest industrial centers looked like before the full-scale invasion (most of which are now occupied or largely destroyed by the Russian military) and what role the railway played in their formation. What is special about the railway in the mountains and in the steppe, what and who are carried there by brand new Hyundais and old locomotives. How small, but at the same time, an inseparable part of the country is the railway track laid many decades ago between two settlements.

Leafing through the book, the reader sees from afar long strings of passenger or freight cars; how the track is skillfully laid along a winding mountain path; how thick morning fog suddenly disperses the bright beam of light from an approaching train. Riding on a train as passengers or standing on the platform in anticipation, you will definitely not see such a railway, so the author gives you this opportunity in his book.

This is the result of the author's many years of photo expeditions throughout Ukraine, from which he brought back photos of Ukrainian trains and railways taken from unique angles.