Anastasia Vlasova was one of the first photographers who came to Kherson right after its deoccupation on 11 November 2022. Born and raised in Kherson, she used to refer to her hometown as "a small city where nothing ever happens" and then admits, "until last year, obviously."
On 30 September 2022, after months of intense fighting, Russia annexed Kherson and the occupied parts of Kherson, Zaporizhzhya, Donetsk, and Luhansk oblasts. Anastasia was in Crimea in 2014 when Russia announced the peninsula as its territory, and at that time, it all seemed like "an absurd and bad dream." As a reporter, she documented many stories of people who lost their homes or still had relatives in the occupied territories. After eight years of the Russo-Ukrainian war, the same has happened to her hometown and her family. Anastasia Vlasova not only documented the deoccupied city but also took part with other Ukrainian photographers in the exhibition "Together—Unbreakable" at Kherson railway station, which was mounted on 16 January 2023, accompanied by the sound of shelling.
Anastasia Vlasova is a documentary photographer, visual storyteller, and media producer, Magnum Foundation Fellow. She is collaborating with Ukrainian media like Hromadske, Suspilne, The Reporters, as well as The Washington Post, The Guardian, Spiegel. Anastasiia has been documenting the Russo-Ukrainian war since its start in 2014.
