Editor’s note: Westport resident Darcy Hicks has reflected on recent work by her brother Tyler, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times photographer, on the front lines of the war in Ukraine. His photos for a report published Sunday in The Times illustrate the brutal “trench warfare” near the city of Boghdan, the target of a ferocious Russian attack.

Tyler Hicks, a 1988 graduate of Staples High School, has covered stories around the world since joining The Times in 1999, focusing on war zones like his current assignment in Ukraine and past conflicts in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen and Syria.

He was held captive for six days, along with three other journalists, in Libya in 2011. One of those journalists was Lynsey Addario, former Westporter and fellow Staples graduate.

He won a 2014 Pulitzer Prize for his breaking news coverage of a terrorist attack in Nairobi, Kenya, and two years later shared another Pulitzer for breaking news photos on the migrant crisis in Europe.

Hicks is a friend of both Addario and Spencer Platt — all fellow Staples alumni and Pulitzer Prize winners for their photography.

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Darcy Hicks writes:

People ask me all the time how I sleep at night, with my brother embedded with Ukraine soldiers. I respond to this question by channeling him, shrugging and deferring right away to the fact that he is at least just documenting the war, while the soldiers are fighting for all they know and love. 

The risks are different. He has the privilege of waking up one morning and deciding to return to the comforts of peace. 

Except that this tucks away the truth, which often stares me in the face when I see his photos. Known for never using a zoom lens, I know that Tyler is standing right where his images place us: in the trenches, or flattened on the ground, or running. I can see him there, my “little” brother, hoping he’s got on his flak jacket and helmet, hoping his need for a better angle doesn’t compromise his visibility. 

I am always grateful for the silence of his photographs, the protection against having to hear bullets, explosions, screams.

Sometimes people seem angry that he does this, or ask if he’s an “adrenaline junkie.” His response is always, “If I were, I definitely wouldn’t choose to get it this way. I’d bungee jump or something!” 

The truth is, I know that he has what many of us have: the understanding that you have to show people what’s happening, so we can all see the same thing and react accordingly. For generations, pictures have changed our behavior, led us to act on our principles, to fight for justice and democracy, at home and abroad. 

Once you see the truth, and have a way to deliver it, you can’t imagine letting it continue to unfold in darkness. And there are so many people doing this work. They aren’t in it for the glory. They sleep in snow, they pass out in heat, they get wildly ill. What would we know — rather, what would we believe — without all their photos?

I am humbled, proud, and yes, sleepless and anxious and angry, that my brother, who has always been an unflinching observer, does this work. But I also wish and hope for a world that offers such boredom and beauty that his pictures would put us right to sleep.