In Focus: David Hadland & Sarah Hickson at The Riverside Studios
Two photo-journalists discuss their work on conflict and its impact
David Hadland has observed the daily live of Ukrainian soldiers on the front line. Picture: David Hadland
August 31, 2026
The Photojournalism Hub is bringing two distinguished documentary photographers to Riverside Studios for an evening devoted to the human stories shaped by conflict.
On Monday 14 September, David Hadland and Sarah Hickson offer a close look at how photography can illuminate lives transformed by crisis, whether on the frontline of war or in the uncertain aftermath of forced migration.
Hadland, a documentary and portrait photographer from Luton, has spent recent years based in Kyiv, working on a long-term project documenting the full-scale war in Ukraine. His ongoing series Kozak examines the daily lives of soldiers stationed along the frontline. Through portraits and quiet observations, he explores how conflict reshapes the relationship between people and the landscapes they once called home. The dugouts and makeshift shelters where soldiers now live sit uneasily between familiarity and rupture, and Hadland’s work traces how war alters not only the physical environment but the way it is remembered. The project’s title evokes a longer history of Ukrainian resistance and identity, linking present-day experience to a deeper cultural continuity. Rather than focusing on spectacle or combat, Hadland centres the everyday reality of men living through war, capturing moments of stillness, fatigue and determination.
Hickson, now based in Brighton, brings a different but complementary perspective. She has undertaken commissions and residencies across West and North Africa, India, Europe and the UK, creating visual narratives that examine community, belonging and fracture. Her exhibition Sounds Unseen, documenting a collaborative music project in the Calais refugee camp known as the Jungle, was commissioned by St Ann’s Warehouse in New York and the Galway International Arts Festival. Her photo essay on Kolkata, produced during an artistic residency with the National Centre for Writing, captures the layered nature of daily life in a city where past and present collide. Hickson’s portraits for the touring theatre project Truth to Power Café formed an integral part of the performance, bearing witness to personal testimonies from participants around the world.
At Riverside Studios she will present an overview of her work on migration and displacement, drawing on projects in Calais, Serbia, Greece, Galway and the UK. She will also speak briefly about her visits to the Taragalte Festival in the Sahara Desert, where she photographed the endangered environment of M’hamid El Ghizlaine and its historic nomadic culture, and about her Kolkata work, which reveals the city’s nuanced rhythms and contradictions.
The evening will include presentations from both photographers, followed by a Q&A and an opportunity for guests to meet and talk with them informally. Produced by the Photojournalism Hub in collaboration with Riverside Studios, the event offers a rare chance to engage directly with two practitioners whose work confronts some of the most urgent human stories of our time.
Tickets are £5. The event will be held again on Monday 12 October and Monday 2 November.
Riverside Studios is at 101 Queen Caroline Street, Hammersmith W6 9BN.
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