This series of macro photographs and analogue mixed-media panels was produced between 2024 and 2025 in collaboration with Swiss and Ukrainian bat preservation societies. It invites the viewer to step close to Ukraine’s war-shattered bat colonies and blur the boundary between documentary and art. Under extreme magnification, the delicate lattice of a wing membrane resembles bomb-scarred parchment. By collapsing physical distance, the work asks us to inhabit the bats’ last refuges — a crumbling attic, a fractured cornice, a blasted classroom ceiling — and to feel the visceral weight of each crack, scorch-mark, and blood-red brushstroke. The red overlay, applied by hand onto torn black-and-white prints, echoes both arterial lines and frontline borders, fusing ecological and human trauma into one surface. Moving closer enlarges the subject, almost dissolving it, and exposing an ecosystem on the brink of erasure while forcing us to confront what war looks like when seen from the perspective of creatures that cannot flee.
