“Natura Morta”: The Photography of Maria Ionova-Gribina

As was the case for so many of us, Russian photographer Maria Ionova-Gribina’s first encounters with death were accidental — chance meetings with dead animals as she played with her brother in the woods near her childhood home. Fueled by innocent curiosity, they would examine the dead birds, moles or insects they discovered and bury them near the forest. Then they decorated the graves with flowers and stones. “Probably it was a children’s curiosity, our first studies of mortality,” Ionova-Gribina says.

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In her latest photo series, “Natura Morta,” Ionova-Gribina revisits these childhood memories with beautiful photographs of dead creatures she encountered on her bicycle forays through the Russian countryside. Dead birds, rabbits, foxes and moles are lovingly posed on colorful flowerbeds, immortalized, the artist explains, before they could be “eaten by worms.” “They were so unprotected,” she says. The series is her way of celebrating the lives of these fragile creatures through art.

Credit: boredpanda.com

And, indeed, Ionova-Gribina’s photographs are celebrations. Tucked into colorful shrouds made up of flowers from the artist’s garden, the dead animals appear to be merely sleeping — undisturbed by the reality of their own demise. A bird appears to have been snatched from the sky in mid-flight. A rabbit is poised in mid-stride — as if his final act was bounding through a field, oblivious to his approaching death. Neither morbid nor grotesque, the photos are both a touching memorial to the wildlife we humans take for granted and a not-too-subtle warning about the fragile nature of our own lives.

Note: In her artist’s statement about the photo series, Ionova-Gribina makes it clear that all of the animals died naturally or after being hit by a car.