The London Transport Museum has unveiled an exhibition featuring 70 photographs of shelters in Ukraine and London illustrating how metro stations serve as shelters for people during times of war.
Despite the 80-year gap between these photographs, they share many commonalities. This exhibition documents the resilience of people in Ukraine and London during wartime and the reality of seeking refuge from air raids, as reported by the museum’s press service.
The exhibition features historical images from the museum’s collection as well as contemporary works by six renowned documentary photographers working in Ukraine: Pavlo Dorogoy, Vyacheslav Ratynsky, Serhiy Korovayny, Maxim Dondyuk, Mykhailo Palinchak, and Emil Duke. In the United Kingdom, most of the photographs of Luftwaffe air raids depict Londoners seeking shelter in metro stations during the 1940s. Similar scenes have been unfolding daily on Ukrainian metro stations since February 2022.
The exhibition portrays ordinary Ukrainian citizens in extraordinary circumstances. They sleep, prepare food, wash clothes, take care of animals, and create temporary improvised homes at metro stations in Kyiv and Kharkiv. These scenes closely resemble archival black-and-white photographs of Londoners finding refuge in metro stations during World War II.
The exhibition will run until spring 2025.
