No Place Like Home by Christopher Wells & BriAnne Wills
Guilty people smile, because they are hiding something…
In total, we’ve lived in Ukraine for more than three years. We’ve seen much of Ukraine, including its mountainous Black Sea coast. We’ve climbed around Byzantine castles, sunbathed atop Greek ruins, walked the cobbled pathways of 1,000-year-old monasteries and hacked our way through the radioactive territory of Chernobyl. In all of these experiences we’ve tried to capture in photographs moments that meant something to us, in places new and familiar. The series of images of us staring coldly into the camera was our way of playing on the stereotype that Ukrainians are cold people. In reality, they are some of the most generous people we’ve met. They just choose not to smile in photographs, a practice that many of our Ukrainian friends trace back to the Cold War. “Guilty people smile, because they are hiding something,” my friend Lyosha told me. The more candid images are exactly that – candid. Never have we packaged the images together like we have here.
+ + +
Christopher Miller is a journalist and BriAnne Wills is a photographer. They have been happily married for one year, and traveling the world together for more than three. They’ve crossed Europe, dabbled in Asia and are currently based in the former Soviet Republic of Kiev, Ukraine. Originally from Portland, Oregon, they often long for good coffee, craft beer and Mexican food, but do enjoy borscht, vodka and salo (look it up).