In January and February 2014, thousands gathered in central Kyiv on Maidan Nezalezhnosti, Independence Square. The protests began against corruption and the abuse of power, then widened when the government turned the country away from Europe and toward Russia. Ordinary people faced violence; the square became both a symbol of resistance and a wound in Ukraine’s modern history. What started there set off a chain of events that reshaped the wider continent, from the war in eastern Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea to the full-scale Russian invasion of 2022.

Christoffer Hjalmarsson photographed those months. Echoes of Maidan, published by Christoffer Hjalmarsson AB in 2025, presents his account of the period and of people who put their lives at risk for something larger than themselves. The book shows the reality of the square as it was: cold, dirty and brutal, but also charged with hope. Its jury citation for the Svenska Fotobokspriset 2026 notes strong photographs and a purposeful form that brings the viewer close and does not look away from the brutality confronting the Ukrainian uprising.

That refusal to aestheticise is what distinguishes the book. Rather than arranging the events into a remote historical tableau, Hjalmarsson’s sequencing and the book’s format keep the reader near the bodies, weather and improvisation of the square, so that a specific winter reads as an unresolved present. Hjalmarsson has worked as a photojournalist in 87 countries, focusing on war, conflict and social change, and was contracted by Expressen between 2015 and 2018; he now works at Sveriges Television’s Dokument inifrån. His experience informs the book’s proximity, but the subject remains the protesters and the place.

For collectors, Echoes of Maidan is worth attention as a considered photobook about a pivotal episode whose consequences continue to unfold, and as the work of a photographer shortlisted for the Svenska Fotobokspriset 2026. The softcover edition, in English, is identified by ISBN 9789153154976.