Lichen War Cartography

• Photographer
  Konstantin Bloch
• Technical Info
  Digital Photo Composite, Photographs Taken With Canon Eos 550d 50 Mm And Canon Eos 90d 100 Mm.
• Photo Date
  2021, 2023

The images are about the war and its aftermath reflected in the lichen patterns. Lichens are wonderful ancient symbiotic microorganisms consisting of microalgae and fungi. Countless lichen drawings on the rocks sometimes resemble country-like patterns. To depict massive destructions in Ukraine after Russian’s invasion and outline other world conflicts, I used images of growing lichens. Each war ends either with a peace treaty resembling a symbiosis-like relationship between parties or leads to long-term unresolved conflict, as what happened in the Holy Land, Korean peninsula and Cyprus island.

I was raised in Kharkiv, Ukraine and since the early 90’s I have been based near Tel Aviv in Israel. As a biologist, I studied symbiosis between different species living in peaceful and beneficial relationships. In my work, macrophotography has been a useful tool to understand symbiotic relationships between microorganisms. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and recent Hamas massacre followed by Hamas-Israel war shocked me and inspired me to express my vision on these terrible wars and other world conflicts through the prism of macrophotography images of lichens growing on the rocks of Israel.