During bike trips to the beach over a summer holiday in the South of Sweden, photographer Maria Ionova-Gribina encountered what anyone riding their bike near a busy road is bound to see — the unfortunate animals dashed by passing cars.

The first was a bird. Far from being repulsed by its dormant form though, she was reminded of her own childhood.

“At the forest edge my brother and I buried birds and mice which had been throttled by a cat or had drowned in a pool,” she says. “We decorated the graves with flowers. So in my photographs I decided to return to my first impressions of death.”

In the photo series Natura Morta, Ionova-Gribina has made the otherwise tragic sight of expired fauna into central figures within intricate and beautiful floral compositions. Their quiet remains are given a new life amid explosions of colorful flowers and leaves. Mortality is grim, but even the inevitable can be beautiful and dignified—it’s all in how you frame it.