Robin Hinsch’s Lonely Are All the Bridges Captures the Fragile Connections That War Destroys
Welcome to this edition of [book spotlight]. Today, we uncover the layers of 'Lonely Are All the Bridges,' by Robin Hinsch (published by GOST Books). We'd love to read your comments below about these insights and ideas behind the artist's work.
Robin Hinsch’s book Lonely Are All the Bridges is now available on Kickstarter — you can support the project here.
Can photography capture what war tries to erase?
Robin Hinsch spent 15 years photographing Ukraine to find out. His pictures focus on what war destroys but does not always show: broken connections, fragile communities, and the weight of memory. This is not about battle scenes or dramatic explosions. It is about the human cost that often goes unseen.
Robin Hinsch’s book Lonely Are All the Bridges captures that hidden cost of war.
The work focuses on Ukraine’s shifting borders, damaged bridges, and the people who live with these scars every day. Hinsch’s long-term project shows how war shapes not just places but also how people remember and survive. He uses photography to resist simple answers and easy stories about good and evil.
The most powerful war images are often the quietest.
The Book
Lonely Are All the Bridges is the culmination of more than 15 years of dedicated photographic exploration in Ukraine. It offers a nuanced, emotionally resonant portrait of a country caught between its Soviet past, ongoing conflict, and an uncertain future.
This deeply personal project documents shifting borders, damaged bridges, and fractured communities, moving beyond battlefield imagery to reveal the quiet ruptures and lingering traumas etched into the landscape and psyche.
Hinsch resists traditional photojournalism, instead weaving layered, contemplative compositions that hold space for ambiguity and memory. Presented alongside a thoughtful essay by art historian Julian Stallabrass, the book confronts readers with the fragile human connections war destroys, demanding both reflection and deep emotional engagement. Robin Hinsch’s book Lonely Are All the Bridges is now available on Kickstarter — you can support the project here.
Crossing Borders once again: You previously photographed landscapes of fossil fuel extraction across multiple countries. In Lonely Are All the Bridges, you focus on one country, Ukraine, over 15 years. What inspired you to invest so deeply in Ukraine? How did its shifting borders and conflicts reshape your perspective?
I've always been interested in places where political fault lines run deep, where history leaves visible marks on people and landscapes alike. Ukraine is such a place. I first arrived there more than 15 years ago, almost by accident, but the experience stayed with me. It was a moment when the country stood on the cusp of something, between post-Soviet inertia and an uncertain future.
Over time, the shifting borders, literal and psychological, began to reflect something much larger. Ukraine became, in my mind, a mirror of Europe’s unresolved tensions: colonial residues, contested identities, the fragility of freedom. What began as a photographic exploration slowly became a deeper inquiry into resilience, loss, and the ways violence shapes memory.
Working in one place for such a long time allowed for a different kind of engagement. It wasn’t just about photography, it was about, for example, building relationships, observing the tensions, understanding the weight of everyday survival. In that sense, Lonely Are All the Bridges isn’t just about Ukraine; it’s about the “psychological“ architecture of a continent in flux.
Ethics of capturing pain: In Wahala, you spoke about knowing when not to take a photo. Did that principle shape your work in Ukraine? What moments did you choose to document, and when did you decide to put the camera down?
The decision of when not to photograph is often the most human, and perhaps the most political, gesture a photographer can make. In Ukraine, this question took on a renewed urgency. War magnifies everything: suffering, dignity, fear, absurdity. And the temptation to capture it all is very real. But I’ve learned that bearing witness does not always require an image.
There were many moments when lifting the camera would have felt like a violation rather than a form of communication. I don’t believe in the romanticism of restraint. Photography has a role in naming violence and in refusing the comfort of distance. But it must come from a place of empathy, not extraction. In Ukraine, I tried to follow that tension carefully, to ask myself whether the image I was about to take was an act of compassion or simply an act of possession.
Long-term vision: After photographing over more than a decade, how did your visual language evolve? Did any patterns or visual strategies emerge as the conflict deepened?
Working over such a long timespan inevitably shifts the way you see and the way you choose to make others see. In the early years, I was more reactive, almost instinct-driven, trying to make sense of what felt like a fragmented landscape. The images were often stark, raw, searching. But as the years passed, I became increasingly interested in the quieter ruptures, the psychological residue rather than the spectacle of, for example, violence. My visual language became slower, more layered. I started looking beyond immediate trauma toward the textures of aftermath: abandoned gestures, charged silences, the haunting normalcy of interrupted lives. These weren’t just aesthetic decisions; they were ethical ones. I wanted to resist the iconography of war that sometimes reduces people to symbols and suffering to spectacle.
Disorientation and ambiguity: You often try to avoid simplification in your work. How do you balance images of war and memory with the need to keep things complex and open-ended?
For me, photography isn’t about clarity, it’s about tension. Especially in the context of war, there’s a tendency to seek clear narratives: heroes and villains, victims and perpetrators, good and evil. But reality doesn’t conform to those binaries, and I believe it’s the responsibility of the image-maker to resist them.
I’m drawn to disorientation not as a stylistic device, but as a form of honesty. Conflict destabilises not only borders, but meaning itself. So instead of trying to explain or resolve that ambiguity, I try to hold space for it, to create images that leave room for contradiction, discomfort, even silence. If an image can provoke uncertainty, perhaps it’s doing something closer to justice. Memory, too, is never fixed. It shifts with time, with trauma, with politics. In Ukraine, I encountered so many overlapping narratives, Soviet ghosts, imperial legacies, nationalist hopes, that it would have been dishonest to reduce them to a single visual storyline. So I embraced fragmentation. In a way, my work became less about constructing meaning, and more about creating a visual field where multiple meanings can coexist, collide and may even remain unresolved.
Moment-to-moment choices: Can you describe a photograph you almost discarded because it felt too clear or too easy to interpret? What made you reconsider?
I can’t point to a single image that fits that description precisely, for me, it’s less about individual photographs and more about an ongoing process of reflection throughout the editing and sequencing. I’m constantly questioning images that feel too resolved, too illustrative, or that risk confirming the viewer’s expectations rather than challenging them.
In my work, as already said, I’m drawn to photographs that allow for ambiguity, that contain contradictions or resist easy reading. If something feels immediately legible, I tend to pause and ask: What is this image doing? Is it reinforcing a narrative that simplifies a complex reality? Or does it leave space for discomfort, for uncertainty, for multiple interpretations?
This isn’t to say that clarity is inherently problematic, sometimes a direct image can be necessary and powerful. But I’m cautious of images that close meaning down too quickly. My process involves letting things sit, returning to them over time, and considering how they function in relation to the broader body of work.
Trust in conflict zones: How did you build relationships with people in Ukraine such as locals, activists, or everyday citizens? In what ways did those relationships shape the work?
Building trust in a conflict zone is never straightforward, and certainly never quick. In Ukraine, it required patience, humility, and above all, genuine presence. I approached people not as subjects, but as interlocutors, recognising their agency, their stories, and their right to shape how those stories were told.
This meant spending time beyond the camera, sharing meals, listening without agenda, sometimes simply being present in moments of uncertainty or grief. It was often through small, seemingly mundane interactions that the deepest connections formed. Trust grew in the gaps between formal interviews or staged encounters, in silences, shared humour, repeated visits.
These relationships profoundly shaped the work. They allowed me to move beyond surface images of conflict and capture moments of resilience, contradiction, and complexity that are often invisible to outsiders. The people I met didn’t just appear in my photographs, they influenced how I saw, what I sought, and how I understood the shifting realities around us. In many ways, the project became a collective endeavour rather than a solo journey.
Memories and trauma: Ukraine has lived through shifting borders and long-term conflict. Were there any personal conversations or encounters that changed how you understood and framed these changes?
While many individual conversations informed my understanding of the situation in Ukraine, what shaped my perspective most profoundly was not a single moment, but the accumulation of experiences and voices over time. The ongoing presence of trauma, often unspoken, sometimes visible only in gesture or atmosphere, became a central aspect of how I approached the work.
Ukraine’s history of shifting borders, occupations, and repeated ruptures creates a layered sense of instability that is felt as much as it is known. Rather than attempting to "capture" trauma in any definitive way, I’ve tried to allow space for ambiguity, to acknowledge that memory and loss resist clear representation. That sensibility became a guiding principle in how I photographed the images and also structured the narrative of the book.
Essay and caption partnership: Julian Stallabrass contributes an essay to the book. What was your process for working with him? How do you see the relationship between text and photography in this project?
Working with Julian Stallabrass was an extraordinary opportunity. His deep engagement with the political dimensions of contemporary photography and conflict made him a more than suitable voice to accompany this work. Our collaboration was based on dialogue, not only about the photographs themselves, but also about the larger ethical and representational questions they raise.
We spoke extensively about the complexity of the war in Ukraine and the challenge of producing images. Julian’s essay doesn’t merely contextualise the photographs, it interrogates them. It opens up critical space around the work, allowing the reader to reflect more deeply on what is being seen and what might remain unseen. I see the relationship between text and photography in this project as one of productive tension. The images are not illustrative, nor is the text explanatory in a traditional sense. Rather, both elements operate in parallel, at times echoing each other, at times diverging. Ideally, the cooperation encourages a slower, more layered engagement with the subject matter.
Bridges as metaphor: The title points to bridges, both literal and symbolic. What kind of connection are you trying to make with this work? Does it speak to memory, geography, survival, or something else?
Bridges are, by nature, liminal spaces, points of connection and passage, but also sites of tension and vulnerability. In this work, they operate on multiple levels simultaneously. Literally, they are physical structures often caught in the crossfire, damaged or destroyed, symbolising the fractured geography of Ukraine. But metaphorically, they speak to the human condition under duress: the fragile connections between past and present, between communities divided by conflict.
To discover more about this intriguing body of work and how you can acquire your own copy, you can find and purchase the book here. Robin Hinsch’s book Lonely Are All the Bridges is now available on Kickstarter — you can support the project here.
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