Lviv, Ukraine – Maria Baranska, a 68-eight-year-old grandmother of four, could pass as a poster child for Ukraine’s post-Soviet economy. Two decades ago, in 1996, Baranska pooled a lifetime of savings to become the proprietor of the photo studio where she had worked for 19 years as a state employee.
In the years that followed, the two-storey building located in a historic neighbourhood next to the tramway came to occupy a niche market in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.
