Rogier Maaskant photographs insects in flight, at twilight and after dark, in forests and over the fields, ditches and ponds around Rotterdam. Working with strobe light, he makes single exposures that hold a caddisfly, moth, lacewing, dragonfly or gnat still enough to be seen, yet leave the arc of its movement legible. The result is neither laboratory record nor sentimental nature portrait; it is a sustained attempt to look closely at animals whose lives mostly escape unaided sight.

Sense of Presence gathers that work as a 112-page hardcover from The Eriskay Connection, published in 2024 with parallel English and Dutch texts. The book includes an essay by Auke-Florian Hiemstra, a science communicator at Naturalis in Leiden, and Maaskant also contributes written text. Rob van Hoesel designed the volume, with lithography by Marc Gijzen and print and binding by Wilco Art Books. For this project Maaskant worked alongside scientists and butterfly specialists, a collaboration that informs the pictures without turning them into illustration.

The urgency behind the subject is straightforward. Insect populations have fallen sharply, through habitat loss and pesticide use, and the species pictured here are part of a biodiversity that is easy to overlook precisely because it is small and nocturnal. Maaskant’s chosen hours and methods give these creatures a stage, and place the book within a wider reawakening of attention to nature and to what its protection now requires.

For collectors, the appeal lies in the conjunction of subject and photographic decision: the technical discipline of strobe-lit single frames, an unfamiliar cast of species, and a publisher known for treating photography as a designed object. The large format and van Hoesel’s design give the sequence room to breathe. It is a considered addition to a shelf of contemporary nature photography.

The first edition was published in a run of 1000 copies.