Growing up in Kyiv, Yelena Yemchuk was drawn to Odesa for its reputation as a place of freedom and contradiction during Soviet times—somewhere where humour, danger, intellectual life and criminality seemed to coexist. She first visited the city in 2003 and returned in 2015, beginning a long photographic project that developed over four years and became a visual tribute to Odesa and its people.

Yemchuk herself left Ukraine in 1981 at the age of eleven, emigrating to the United States with her family in secrecy, unable to tell anyone and unlikely to ever return under the Iron Curtain. After Ukrainian independence, she was able to revisit her homeland, and from the mid-1990s she travelled regularly between Kyiv and the US, photographing daily life while reconnecting with her grandmother during a period of national and personal transformation.

Her work in Odesa began in 2015, initially focusing on young cadets at the military academy during a time of renewed conflict following the annexation of Crimea and unrest in eastern Ukraine. Over time, her approach expanded beyond portraiture, aiming to situate these individuals within the wider context of the city itself. She continued working in Odesa until 2019, building a layered portrait shaped by history, war and identity.