Expectations is a series of photographs, in the form of four ‘visual poems’, about Ukraine, published in 2015. Ukraine has been described as a ‘land of endless expectations’, a nation where people are always expecting, hoping, that - this time - things will get better.

The West has always ignored the importance of Europe’s largest country, a lack of understanding & interest has meant that the West has often thought of Ukraine as some kind of less important version of Russia. There can hardly be a country that has had a more tumultuous experience of the last hundred years.

After the trauma of the First World War came the Civil War and the last stand of the White Guard in Kyiv described by Bulgakov, the promised utopia of the Revolution, the brutal Hunger of the ‘30’s followed by the unimaginable suffering of the Great Patriotic War, a painfully earned victory, followed by the repressions of Stalinism and the steadily worsening stagnation of the Soviet Union culminating finally in its collapse. After all that came the devastating hardship of the 1990’s, and the final frustration - being strung along with hopes of joining a wider Europe.

Poem 1 - Fortune (excerpts)

The idea of fortune isn't so much about winning the lottery, it is about the process of waiting, of enduring, about the possibility rather than its fulfilment. Ukraine is in a perpetual state of expectancy, of waiting for better times. Sometimes any change at all can seem preferable to none.

Poem 2 - Fears (excerpts)

Poem 3 - Memory (excerpts)

Ukraine is the child of a failed utopian dream - of collapsed socialism. But it is also a place where, despite the often absurdity of everyday life for many people who live there, a strength and sincerity of personal relationships and shared experience of living through the difficult transformations of the '90's form strong bonds, where you may dive into intense philosophical discussion within minutes of meeting a stranger of friend, a place from which there is a lot to learn.