Louis Lemaire-Sicre 2026 Gentex Corp Personal Safety Award
Anti-drone tunnels are installed on roads leading to the front line to protect passing cars from Russian FPVs on the way to the town of Ryasne, about nine kilometers from the Russian border, in Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine, 8 November 2025.
Two wounded soldiers are evacuated after spending more than thirty days at a frontline position. It took them four days to cross the six-kilometre kill zone between the zero line and the evacuation point. Undisclosed location, Zaporizhzhia front, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Ukraine, 5 July 2026.
For Epiphany, a small group has gathered along the riverbank early in the morning. From the shore, they work to clear a space wide enough in the frozen edge of the river to allow themselves to plunge in. In the Orthodox tradition, immersion imitates that of Christ and absolves the faithful for the coming year, Kyiv, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine, 6 January 2026.
Susha, 24, and her partner, Vitali, 30, are both drone operators in the same unit of the 11th Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. After meeting in the army, they decided to fight together, as a couple, and have refused to be separated since. Near Petropavlivka, Dnipro Oblast, Ukraine, 21 September 2025.
The site of a Russian strike on a residential building in Kyiv’s Darnytsia district. That night, the attack killed 30 people and injured around 100 across the capital. Over the summer, Russian strikes across Ukraine and particularly on the capital have drastically increased in intensity. Kyiv, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine, 2 July 2026.
A Ukrainian paramedic, callsign “Gandalf,” prepares a wounded soldier who suffered shrapnel injuries for transfer to a hospital in the rear after receiving emergency care at a stabilisation point. Because of the threat from drones, evacuations mostly take place at night. Undisclosed location, Zaporizhzhia front, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Ukraine, 6 July 2026.
New reinforced defensive lines are being installed east of Donetsk, outside of Dobropillia, in the Pokrovsk sector, in anticipation of further Russian advances. Sunflowers, a symbol of Ukraine, have taken root between barbed wire and dragon’s teeth. Dobropillia, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, 30 July 2025.
A soldier from the 3rd assault brigade carries a Mavic drone during training at a polygon in eastern Ukraine near Izium, Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine, 14 November 2025.
Protesters gather in Kyiv for a third consecutive day to demonstrate against the dismissal of Ukraine’s Defence Minister, Fedorov. The move is widely seen in Ukraine as a setback to the modernisation of the country’s institutions, prompting demonstrations across the country in support of the former minister. Kyiv, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine, 18 July 2026.
Two off-duty soldiers on a break watch as KAB-250 glide bombs strike the city of Izium, in eastern Ukraine. Liberated from Russian occupation in 2022, the city has since become an important logistical hub for the front and a rear base for Ukrainian units operating in the region. Kharkiv Oblast, 13 August 2026.
Vova, 44, a soldier with Ukraine’s 225th Brigade, after his evacuation from the front. After more than a month on the zero line, he spent four days helping two wounded comrades cover more than six kilometres to reach an evacuation point, dragging one of them on a blanket. Only one survived. Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Ukraine, 5 July 2026.
Roman, a soldier with Ukraine’s 125th Brigade, on the day of his first rotation to the frontline. A few hours before leaving for his position, he stopped to pray at a local church, where a civilian gave him flowers as a blessing before his departure. Kharkiv Oblast, 14 August 2026.
About the work
Faultline documents life along Ukraine’s expanding zone of war, from the frontlines and immediate rear of the eastern front to cities farther from the fighting. At its centre is the grey zone where civilian and military spaces increasingly overlap. As the war drags into its fourth year, danger is no longer confined to conventional combat zones. Pockets of life remain close to a front that continues to draw nearer, under a persistent threat that is increasingly difficult to contain geographically. The project examines how sustained pressure alters both the defence of territory and the way that territory is inhabited.
Technological advances in warfare have reshaped the use of space and people's relationship to it. The saturation of frontline areas with kamikaze drones has forced not only tactical changes but physical alterations to the landscape. Corridors of hastily installed anti-drone nets now cover roads and streets, while expanding systems of fortifications cut through fields and settlements along the eastern defensive belt.
Along the front, military presence increasingly overlaps with the civilian spaces that remain. Towns fill with soldiers, equipment and defensive infrastructure as the fighting draws closer. At the rear, war is ever-present. Large-scale attacks on Ukrainian cities reinforce these conditions of uncertainty under which civilians nonetheless persist. The distinction between front and rear becomes increasingly difficult to define.
Rather than concentrating on moments of combat, Faultline looks at adaptation, routine and the prolonged periods of waiting between them. It follows both the changing physical landscape of a war increasingly shaped by drones and unmanned systems and the quieter effects of sustained danger on individuals, relationships and everyday behaviour.
Developed through repeated periods spent with soldiers and civilians in frontline and rear areas, the project focuses on what exists between moments of violence. Remaining present during these quieter periods allows the people photographed to emerge beyond the categories through which war is usually seen, as individuals maintaining relationships, identities and forms of belonging in a landscape being transformed around them.
About the Photographer
Louis Lemaire-Sicre is a photojournalist working across the former Soviet space, where war, memory, and political rupture continue to reshape ordinary lives. His practice traces the quiet transformations of societies living at the edge of conflict, in places where yesterday’s empires still define tomorrow’s realities. Through long-term documentary work, he focuses on underreported communities navigating the tension between survival and continuity. He is currently living in Kyiv, where he has been based full time since the beginning of 2025