One month after Russia's attack on Ukraine, a new normality has emerged into the daily lives of people living in the west of the country. Even when the air-raid sirens sound, silence remains. It is war, but the front line, where civilians and soldiers are killed every day, is a few hundred kilometres away.

The silence can be heard in the train station halls, where thousands of refugees from the embattled areas arrive every day. It’s spreading through hotels that are booked to the last room and crowding into theaters where volunteers are sorting donations. It lays over queues of cars in front of military checkpoints and strides through classrooms that now have to serve as emergency shelters.

At a shelter for the LGBTIQ+ community in Chernivtsi, Sofia has convinced her partner Sasha, who is trans, not to enlist in the army. In a former beauty clinic, fighters from the controversial Azov Battalion contort their faces in pain. They are treated by doctors who were caught up in the war while on skiing holiday and could not return to their hometowns. In the small village of Duliby, Natalia mourns her two fallen brothers. The younger one was blown up by a mine in Mariupol and the older one was killed 10 days later by a rocket in Yaroviv. Young men and women who look like students crawl across the dusty ground during one of the many training sessions for territorial defence, saying phrases like: "I'm not afraid of fighting, I'm afraid of losing my country."

In collected fragments and personal stories, different perspectives from the first weeks of the war become visible. In addition to the photographic work, three protagonists document the effects of the war on their everyday lives in personal and constantly updated mobile phone videos.

Where you can hear the silence ist ein gemeinsames Projekt von Helena Lea Manhartsberger und Laila Sieber.