Ukrainian journalist Alisa Sapova and British photographer Anastasia Taylor-Lind knew instantly they would be friends.

“Our creative kinship happened by chance,” Taylor-Lind says. “It’s a beautiful gift to meet someone who shares the same values when it comes to reporting.”

Speaking to the pair on a chilly May morning at the Sydney Writer’s Festival about their ongoing photojournalist project 5km From the Frontline, it’s clear this creative kinship has only strengthened since their chance meeting 10 years ago in Eastern Ukraine.

Having arrived in Australia the night before, Sapova and Taylor-Lind are full of energy, finishing each other’s sentences and laughing over the wild memories they have shared.

They began their social media project 5km From the Frontline in 2018 documenting human rights violations in Ukraine for the International Bar Association.

Each day, they published a photograph and a short text on Instagram. These posts countered conventional media portrayals of war. Instead of clichés of weapons, explosions and human remains, the posts showcased family picnics, mothers swaddling laughing babies and children playing on swings.

Most of these early stories came from Avdiivka, where the pair spent several months listening to stories from local families. During this time, Ukraine had become the “forgotten war”. The active conflict that began in 2014 had largely ended by 2016.

The mainstream media moved on. But Sapova and Taylor-Lind chose to stay.

“We like getting to know people and working slowly,” Taylor-Lind says.

They say this style of work was a reaction against the fast-paced sensationalised news cycle, with its ethical problems.

“When you’re a journalist, it’s easy to make people feel like they’re animals in a zoo. It’s important they know you actually care about what they’re experiencing,” Sapova says.

The pair are still in contact with many people they worked with over the years. Sapova says it’s “like an extended family”.

Rodion, a member of this “extended family”, lives in Optyne, a suburb of Donetsk in Ukraine. When the suburb was attacked in 2015, most locals were forced to evacuate.

Rodion stayed behind to care for about 30 people who couldn’t leave due to poor health or old age.

“Rodion found himself in this extraordinary circumstance and decided to sacrifice his whole life for this community,” Taylor-Lind says.

Overnight, he became the single connection between Optyne and the outside world. He brought medicine and food into the suburb despite kilometres of landmines that contaminated the area.

The suburb fell to the Russians in 2022 yet Rodion remained as the community’s guardian.

“He is an unsung hero,” Taylor-Lind says. “He gets no glory.”

Sapova says many civilian ‘heroes’ like Rodion are overlooked in the media because of gender stereotypes around war. “We often fall into a trap where we only see women in war who are suffering, while men are only viewed as active combatants.”

Taylor-Lind agrees and adds: “But with 5km From the Frontline, we challenge this stereotype. We tell real stories about civilians like Rodion doing incredibly brave, heroic things simply because they find themselves in these circumstances.”

Sapova and Taylor-Lind will return to Ukraine later this year to continue their project. As Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine continues without an end in sight, the conflict is fading from the news cycle.

“I’m filled with uncertainty and self-doubt,” Taylor-Lind says. “Our work is far from finished. To know I don’t have to do it alone makes it easier.”

Asked if they have any advice for student journalists, they agreed that finding a unique angle on a story is always important.

“Don’t chase the same story as everyone else,” Taylor-Lind says. “There’s always more to discover away from the crowds.”

This attitude led to the creation of the pair’s favourite post.

In 2019, millions of displaced civilians were forced to cross the border between Ukraine and Russian-occupied zones. War correspondents flocked to these checkpoints, ready to snap front-page photographs of human suffering.

Sapova and Taylor-Lind left the checkpoints without taking a photo. Like always, they looked for a story away from media attention. At a nearby bus stop, they saw a man and woman embracing; a touching moment of reconciliation, a beacon of hope in the endless cycle of fighting.

“My advice to young journalists is to relax and look around,” Sapova concludes. “There will always be something interesting or beautiful to find.”