Everything in his old Kyiv apartment was cluttered – a building constructed under the tsars and repaired in 1945 during the Soviet Union era. At the entrance hung parkas, two "press" armbands and a bulletproof vest: the jumble of a man on the road. Getting to the kitchen required weaving between trays where Glyadelov developed his 35 mm film and printed his photographs. Jugs and test tubes for mixing chemicals lined his shower. "The only place I part with my Leica," said Glyadelov, 69, one of Ukraine's leading contemporary photographers.

"Sacha" spends his life with his camera, most often far from his photo lab apartment. Although he has traveled widely (Georgia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Armenia…), his M6 has hardly missed anything of his country's life over the past 35 years. He was there at Chernobyl. He photographed the Ukrainian flag raised before Kyiv City Hall in July 1990 and his haunting series on street children chronicled the turmoil of the following decade. From that era, the 1990s, hair remained, his long hair, Indian bracelets and mustache – now turned white.

He, too, knew hunger during those years. With his Leica, he captured mouths singing the Ukrainian anthem in unison during the "Orange Revolution" in 2004, and recorded a human chain passing paving stones on Independence Square in February 2014. In the Donbas, his immobilized foot appeared in the frame of his own lens: during the battle of Ilovaisk, he was wounded himself.

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