British artist Mark Neville moved from London to his home and studio to live in Kyiv, Ukraine, last year.
With 100,000 Russian troops massed on the Ukrainian border and the entire country on the brink of war, Neville's book project, Stop Tanks With Books, calls on the international community to urgently support Ukraine and help deter further Russian invasion. .
Since 2015, Neville has been documenting life in Ukraine, with subjects ranging from tourists on the beaches of Odessa to Roma communities on the Hungarian border, churchgoers and clubbers in Kyiv, to civilians and soldiers living on the front lines. line in the east of Ukraine. Eighty of Neville's photographs are brought together in this book, edited by David Campany, along with short stories about the conflict by Ukrainian novelist Lyuba Yakimchuk; research by the Center for Eastern European Studies in Berlin on the 2.5 million Ukrainians already displaced by the war; and a call to action for the international community.
Employing his unique activist strategy of targeted book dissemination, Neville sent 750 free copies of the book's first edition to leading legislators, opinion makers, ambassadors, members of parliament, members of the international community and their media, as well as those directly involved in the peace talks.
The goal is that the recipients of this book will be spurred on to real action that will result in an end to the war, an end to the carnage in eastern Ukraine, and the withdrawal of Russian forces from occupied Donbas and Crimea.
An additional 750 copies were also available through Nazraeli Press for general distribution internationally and quickly sold out.
Neville wrote in the first edition: “The atmosphere is extremely tense. Air raid shelters and siren drills are being prepared in the capital. Do we stay and fight? Or do we flee Ukraine altogether? I wonder what the international response would be if Stockholm, London, Paris or New York were threatened with an imminent and unprovoked invasion by Russia. Our book is a necessary prayer and supplication to the international community and Nazraeli Press and I have done our best to get our book printed and distributed before Putin invades." Published after the invasion, this important second edition of the book includes an artist statement and updated maps.
Hard cover,
180 pages, 80 four-color plates.
Edited by David Campany
2 edition
