Half of Kiev’s population was killed during the Second World War. The three-year Nazi occupation was brutal. The Red Army liberated the city at the end of 1943. Today this tragic period is recalled in a park just south of downtown Kiev, along the Dnieper River. The Soviet Union has vanished and the Ukraine is now an independent nation. A heroic statue erected by Soviet chairman Leonid Brezhnev honors what was then Ukraine’s “Motherland,” the USSR. Before it stands a cauldron meant to hold an eternal flame in honor of those who perished. I used a superwide angle 14mm focal length here to relate the cauldron to both the statue and the overhead clouds. I positioned the largest flow of clouds to symbolize smoke over the cauldron at left, and turn the dagger of the statue into a torch held just below a smaller flow of clouds at right. Since I am much closer to the cauldron then the statue, it dominates the scene, anchoring the image upon a funereal black mound and bowl. The slight tilt of the statue adds a surrealistic edge to the photograph.