Within the first weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, tens of millions of Ukrainians have been displaced in one of many quickest mass actions of individuals in current historical past. Prepare stations grew to become shelters. Theaters grew to become assist facilities. Borders grew to become ready rooms for grief. Journalists moved in the other way, towards uncertainty, as a result of with out witnesses, displacement turns into statistics and conflict turns into abstraction.
I used to be one in every of them, reporting with my colleague and good friend, Brent Renaud.
On March 13, 2022, we crossed what remained of a destroyed bridge into Irpin, a suburb north of Kyiv the place households have been fleeing Russian bombardment. Ukrainian troopers helped aged individuals, kids and the wounded transfer throughout twisted concrete and rebar, carrying what little that they had managed to avoid wasting. Canine wandered between deserted automobiles. The sound of artillery echoed within the distance — a rhythm that rapidly turns into the background noise of conflict.
As seasoned journalists, Brent and I had spent current years documenting displacement — migrants crossing rivers in Central America, refugees transferring by camps in Greece, households uprooted by hurricanes and battle throughout the Americas. Motion had develop into the story we adopted. In Ukraine, that motion felt sooner, heavier, irreversible.
Minutes after accepting a trip from a neighborhood driver who provided to take us towards an evacuation level, gunfire erupted. I bear in mind the sound of glass breaking, bullets tearing by metallic, the intuition to press my face to the ground of the automobile. When the automobile stopped, Brent was slumped beside the motive force, bleeding from his neck. I attempted to cease the bleeding with my arms. He was already unconscious.
That was the second I ended being solely an observer.
Brent believed deeply within the duty of journalists to doc historical past and bear witness. We met as fellows at Harvard and constructed a friendship grounded in work that sought to make distant struggling seen with out spectacle. We drove towards disasters as a substitute of away from them — not out of bravery, however out of a shared conviction that the general public has a proper to firsthand accounts, to correct details about occasions that form their lives and futures.
4 years in the past, he grew to become the primary American journalist killed in Ukraine after the invasion.
When journalists are killed for reporting the information, we should struggle to make sure reality doesn’t develop into a casualty too. Focusing solely on particular person loss dangers obscuring the bigger reality. Brent’s loss of life was not an remoted tragedy.
Throughout conflicts all over the world, journalists proceed to be injured, detained and killed at alarming charges. A report printed by the Committee to Shield Journalists recently found that 2025 was the deadliest yr on file for the press, with 129 journalists and media employees killed worldwide. Because the begin of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and Brent’s killing, greater than 400 journalists and media employees have been killed worldwide.
Journalists are sometimes described as impartial observers, however conflict makes that concept fragile. The road between documenting violence and changing into a part of it may possibly disappear in seconds. Protecting vests, press markings and expertise don’t assure security. What they assure is publicity.
Within the months after the assault, as I recovered from a number of surgical procedures, I struggled with a query acquainted to many survivors: why him and never me? Survivor’s guilt shouldn’t be dramatic. It’s repetitive. It lives in small particulars — a seat in a automobile, a call made rapidly, a reminiscence that replays with out decision.
Through the invasion of Ukraine, the world noticed photographs of households crossing destroyed bridges, mass graves uncovered and cities decreased to rubble. These photographs formed public understanding, coverage debates and humanitarian response. They existed as a result of a journalist stood shut sufficient to file them.
The price of that proximity is commonly invisible.
I bear in mind the evacuation practice leaving Kyiv days after the assault. I spotted then that I used to be now not behind the digital camera. I used to be one other individual being evacuated, one other physique moved by battle. Struggle rearranges roles with out warning.
I typically return to the final moments earlier than the assault, the bizarre dialog within the automobile, the idea that we’d end the day and proceed working. Struggle interrupts time with out warning. What stays are fragments: a seat, a sound, the load of a digital camera, the reminiscence of a good friend whose life was outlined by taking note of others.
Within the years since, making an attempt to make sense of that day grew to become a part of the work itself. Brent’s life and loss of life at the moment are the topic of the documentary “Armed Solely With a Digital camera,” which I produced. Making the movie meant confronting painful photographs and reminiscences, however we intentionally selected to not look away. We didn’t soften the cruelty of conflict or disguise the fact of Brent’s loss of life, as a result of the violence journalists witness — and typically endure — is exactly what the world is commonly shielded from. Bearing witness requires honesty, even when it’s uncomfortable.
At present, U.S.-based journalists are going through situations that would someday mirror the conflict zones we’ve lined overseas. On the identical time, the erosion of belief within the press has coincided with a rising tolerance for assaults on those that doc conflict.
I nonetheless return to the locations the place motion defines individuals’s lives, borders, evacuation routes, communities residing with uncertainty, not as a result of the questions have solutions, however as a result of the act of documenting resists disappearance. Brent understood this instinctively. The work was by no means about recognition; it was about presence.
Journalism doesn’t cease violence. However it makes denial more durable. It creates a file that can not be simply erased.
That’s the duty Brent carried. It’s the one many journalists proceed to hold now, armed solely with a digital camera and the idea that the reality issues.
Juan Arredondo is a photojournalist and producer of “Armed Solely With a Digital camera: The Life and Demise of Brent Renaud.”
