My Antiwar Photo Lives On

From New York to Moscow, from posters to protest, from walls to fabric

In 2022, I created a photograph in New York with actress Chelsea Lesage and other members and volunteers, who wished to remain unnamed for safety reasons. Even my son was there—just one year old at the time. I held him in my left arm and my camera in my right. The project felt like a cry pressed into paper, fragile yet defiant. Volunteers carried that image back to Moscow in secret, printing and pasting it in stairwells and along the grey walls of the city. Five hundred times it appeared, like a whisper repeated until it became a chorus.

Since then, the photograph has lived its own life, beyond me. It was lifted during peaceful protests, transformed into painted placards, and—most recently—stitched into the fabric of everyday life as a tote bag.

The remarkable artist Maria Ratinova reimagined my photograph as a painting, which was then used for posters and printed on shirts and bags.

Alongside my work, she has created many other beautiful prints for the Shirts4Hopes project, which raises funds for Ukrainian hostages and Russian political prisoners.

My photograph is printed on the last bag in their shop: “Сам воюешь – сам рожай” (“If you fight, you give birth yourself”). An image that once hung against the damp brick walls of Moscow now folds into someone’s hands, carrying groceries, books, perhaps bread. Like an object that remembers, it continues to speak.

If you wish to support political prisoners in Russia, you can do so by purchasing a bag or t-shirt through this link.