Once peaceful Ukrainian cityscapes now abound with sandbags, checkpoints, burnt cars, and destroyed buildings. These unfamiliar objects have an uncanny ability to grab attention – yet trigger anxiety when someone sees them for the first time.
When exploring novel environments affected by the war, I decided to search for visual motifs that could be perceived as recognizable images like silhouettes of animals, fairy tale characters, and basic symbols – things I've been familiar with since I was a child.
I might see a rat's grin in a window shattered by a bomb explosion, but it doesn't feel threatening. On the contrary, translating a horrible trace of the war into a familiar visual unit seems like finding a friend's face in a crowd of strangers.
That may be why children have long been exposed to fictional horrors. By familiarizing themselves with imaginary threats, they learn not to be afraid of the real world. Indeed, the villains from the most nightmarish fairy tales are less scary than the actual holes made by Russian missile explosions.
