They have seen it all: death and survival, miracles and sorrow, pain and happiness. In the last four years, James Hill has created over 400 black-and-white portraits of the old guard.

Each has a story to tell. Wearing their uniforms displaying dozens of honors and medals, their eyes reflect the burden of tragedy, pride and fatigue.

“I realized that these veterans were nearing the end of their lives and with each passing year there were less and less. This already seemed to me to be the last chance to record these faces before the veterans, Russia’s most visible connection to the war, disappeared from view,” Hill was quoted as saying.

The photographer’s palette is a thousand shades of gray, helping Hill gain sought-after authenticity and emotion.

Photograph by James Hill

The idea for the project came along in 2006, when the British photographer, fascinated by the Russian tradition of honoring their war veterans, decided to take pictures of them during the Victory Day celebrations at Moscow’s Gorky Park.

Keeping in mind that over a million women fought in the war, initially Hill thought he would limit himself to taking pictures only of women veterans. However, later on he scrapped this idea and continued his project at Gorky Park on May 9 of 2007, 2008 and 2009, creating more and more portraits of both women and men.

“They are heroes, every one of them. Often I take 6, 8 or even 12 pictures of them, and after a few frames, their position changes and something from inside starts to show. Mostly they are used to people taking just one or two pictures of them. And so when I spend a longer time photographing them, feelings that are not originally on the surface start to appear,” Hill explained.

A selection of Hill’s portraits at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art will be on display from April 30 until May 23.