Every voice, every story, every life matters. That is the message behind I AM, the latest exhibition by photojournalist Natalia Sharomova, showing at Creative Response, Farnham, until 2.30pm today (October 17).

This intensely moving exhibition encapsulates the fragility yet resilience of life and the importance of connection and identity.

It includes images from this summer when she and her children returned to her homeland of Ukraine, a country they left in 2022 when Russia invaded.

In the Children of the War series included in the exhibition, her children and friends are both childlike and yet old, older than they should be, serious against a brooding backdrop of a suffering country.

One shows them walking along a railway line in a manner strikingly reminiscent of Rob Reiner’s coming-of-age film Stand By Me, a film Natalia is yet to see. The voices of ordinary children caught up in war are rarely heard, but they matter.

“This exhibition I AM brings together two stories: Children of the War and What War Makes to Women,” said Natalia.

“Both explore the human cost of Russia’s war against Ukraine, seen through the eyes of those whose lives have been forever changed.

“Children of the War tells the stories of Ukrainian children growing up under daily bombing from Russia. We do not choose the time we are born into — and these children must live through fear and loss that make them grow up too soon.

“Through photography and storytelling, I was trying to show daily life. As all children they want to play and want to have adventures. The project captures that but also strength, resilience in their faces. For these children there is no safe place at night to sleep.”

She added: “What War Makes to Women reveals the hidden wounds and quiet courage of Ukrainian women. They hold another frontline — caring for their families, raising children alone, and waiting in uncertainty for news from husbands or sons at war.

“We see them as just ordinary. But inside their minds are barbed wires, which hurt all the time.”

Many of the photographs were taken in Ukraine and celebrate that deep connection but the core I AM collection are local and feature a fellow Ukrainian Viktoria, also a war refugee.

At times, Viktoria is trapped behind barbed wire, then she is blindfolded, feeling her way in a field, lost but determined. A drone image shows her tiny and vulnerable in a huge green landscape. Her story matters too. Everyone’s does.

These are photos that invite proper contemplation. They are beautiful, sometimes uncomfortable, always compelling.

See them if you can between 10am and 2.30pm today at Creative Response, Vernon House, West Street, Farnham, (beside Farnham Library). Some of them are also on Natalia’s website www.nataliasharomova.com or Instagram: @natalia.sharomova

Review by Stella Wiseman