“As night fell in Kyiv, no lights would turn on, and many of the apartments sat empty as the Russians attempted to push their way into the city. The looming smoke on the horizon darkened against the background of a sunset over the towns of Irpin and Bucha,” says the photographer Madeline Kelly. “At the time of this photo, there was a mandatory curfew from 8 pm to 7 am. Trapping us inside, the fighting continued on the horizon. For a brief period of time, the war felt a world away until the sounds of explosions and gunfire reached us once again.”
Madeleine Kelly is a 24 year old photojournalist from the United States. She is currently based in central and eastern Europe where she is both working and getting her masters degree in International War Studies from the University College of Dublin and Potsdam University.
Kelly began her journey as a photographer at a young age while travelling to American National Parks with her grandparents. There she fell in love with photography and animals, hoping to combine these to become a full time wildlife photographer as an adult. After changing career paths, Kelly began her work as a photojournalist in Hong Kong in 2019, during the anti-extradition protests. She continued her work throughout 2020 across America during the Black Lives Matter movement and the 2020 presidential election. In 2021, Kelly was covering the January 6th insurrection at the US Capitol when she survived a stab attack thanks to her bullet proof vest.
Now she is documenting the war in Ukraine, where she has covered news stories from Kyiv, Bucha, Irpin, Borodyanka, Ornihiv, Zaporizhia, Dnipro and most recently Lysychansk, Bakhmut and Kremenchuk.