Victoria Amelina explored a land of atrocities and secrets

The summer grass was long under the cherry tree, and they did not know where to dig at first. Victoria Amelina was standing in a garden in the village of Kapytolivka, near Izyum in eastern Ukraine, with the aged father of Volodymyr Vakulenko, a poet. The poet had been shot by the Russians, his body hastily buried in one of 400 graves. His father, desperate with grief, could cling only to one thing: that Volodymyr had told him he had buried his diary of the Russian occupation under the cherry tree.

She found it before he did. The loose pages were wrapped in rolled-up cellophane, muddy but safe. She photographed herself holding them like a weapon, because they held the truth.