Lonely Are All the Bridges is not exactly a war book, but a portrait of Ukraine and its people shaped by years of political tension, instability and conflict. Photographer Robin Hinsch first travelled to Ukraine in 2010 and returned repeatedly over more than a decade, documenting landscapes, ruins and everyday lives far removed from the imagery usually seen in the news.

The photographs present a melancholic vision of a country caught between a contested past and an uncertain future. Soviet monuments, abandoned buildings, snowy fields and rain-soaked streets create an atmosphere that feels both timeless and fragile. People appear carefully placed within these environments—homes, workplaces, ruins and battlefields—while muted colours and monochrome images blur the sense of time even further.

Animals recur throughout the book as symbolic figures, suggesting abandonment while also giving the work a dreamlike quality. Bridges, inspired by a poem by Ingeborg Bachmann, become a metaphor for connection and isolation. Influenced by Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror, Hinsch’s approach combines memories, fragments and visual motifs into a non-linear narrative where past and present coexist.