Russian photographer Maria Ionova-Gribina created bright, colorful graves for the dead animals that she has stumbled upon during her bicycle rides during summer.
In her moving photo series titled “Natura Morta”, Ionova-Gribina placed the dead animals—mostly birds, squirrels, rabbits, and rats—on a bed of flowers, resulting in a vivid contrast of life and death.
According to Ionova-Gribina, all the animals featured in her work died of “natural causes or car accidents”, and were found not long after their death.
“When me and my brother found a dead mole, bird or bug, we buried them on the border of a forest. And we decorated the grave with flowers and stones. Why we did it that way? Probably it was a children’s curiosity, our first studies of mortality,” said the photographer on her website.
View more of her enchanting work below.
[via DeMilked, images by Maria Ionova-Gribina]