Lonely Are All the Bridges: Robin Hinsch’s Ukraine

5 months ago

The new photo book by photographer Robin Hinsch does not tell the story of war directly. Lonely Are All the Bridges is instead a layered portrait of Ukraine, built over the course of more than a decade, where landscapes, people, and symbols coexist in a suspended time between past and present. As the photographer himself states, the project was not created to document a conflict, but to observe a territory in which systems collapse, borders are redefined, and everyday life continues to exist amid instability and transformation.

Bear, Mykolaiv Zoo, Ukraine, 2022 © Robin Hinsch | After the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, on the third day of the attack a bomb hit Mykolaiv Zoo, between the polar bear and tiger enclosures. People and animals remained unharmed. After the first bombing, more cluster bombs fell near the administration building and inside an aviary.

Hinsch first visited Ukraine in 2010, drawn by the country’s political tensions and the figure of then-president Viktor Yanukovych, described as “the new dictator between East and West.” From that moment on, he returned several times, gradually building a visual narrative far removed from press imagery. His photographs convey a melancholic and silent vision, where the human dimension intertwines with a landscape marked by history, memory, and uncertainty.

Malanka II, Krasnoilsk, Ukraine, 2018 © Robin Hinsch | Malanka is a Ukrainian folk holiday celebrated on January 13, corresponding to December 31 in the Julian calendar (New Year’s Eve according to the old calendar). It highlights cultural identity and marks a new beginning in the old Julian calendar. The celebration also symbolizes the ongoing search for independence amid political change, bringing people together in the name of cultural pride and new beginnings.

The images show Soviet ruins, historical monuments, countryside immersed in snow or rain, and abandoned industrial settings. The human figures — often isolated — are placed within these environments with careful, almost cinematic composition. The result is a visual sequence that escapes temporal linearity: color and black-and-white photographs alternate, while the absence of captions helps create a sense of indefinite time.

Bus stop, Odesa Oblast, Ukraine, 2012 © Robin Hinsch | The Iron Curtain was both a metaphorical and physical barrier that divided Europe during the Cold War, separating the Western countries that were NATO members from the Eastern Warsaw Pact nations dominated by the Soviet Union. The term was coined by Winston Churchill in 1946 and became the symbol of the division between East and West. It remained in effect until the political changes of the late 1980s and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, representing the Cold War divide and Europe’s subsequent reunification.

Some symbolic elements also recur throughout the book. Animals run through the entire project: horses, stray dogs, wild cats, and even a bear, a symbol associated with Russia, which appears both in a zoo and as a costume worn by a child. In the same way, the bridge — evoked by the title taken from a poem by Ingeborg Bachmann — becomes a central metaphor: a connection between two sides that, paradoxically, remains isolated and fragile.

Retroville, Kyiv, Ukraine, 2022 © Robin Hinsch | Retroville, a shopping mall located in Kyiv, was hit by a Russian airstrike. Part of the mall, along with its 12-story business center, was destroyed. At least eight people were killed.

In the final notes of the volume, Hinsch cites Mirror by Andrei Tarkovsky, a film built through a fragmented narrative in which memories, dreams, and different times coexist. This approach influences the structure of the book, which proceeds through visual associations rather than a linear story, allowing an emotional rather than documentary dimension to emerge.

Serhii Chernyshov, Irpin, Ukraine, 2022 © Robin Hinsch | When Serhii Chernyshov returned to Irpin after the Russian invasion, he was surprised to find his beloved pigeons still in the dovecote. Although he had fled during the conflict, his pigeons had stayed, and some new ones had even joined the group. Chernyshov, a lifelong pigeon breeder, now takes care of both his old and new feathered friends, a symbol of resilience in the face of adversity.

The result is a project that reflects on the slow and often invisible transformations running through a society. Lonely Are All the Bridges seeks neither heroes nor antagonists, but observes the subtle forces that divide people and at the same time hold them together, turning the Ukrainian landscape into a narrative suspended between memory, the present, and an uncertain future.

Cover image: Bridge II, Gorochowatka, Oskil River, Ukraine, 2023 © Robin Hinsch

Photography book

Written by Anna Frattini