SINGAPORE – Amid Singapore’s urban sprawl, animals like otters, macaques and monitor lizards have taken up residence. But with increasing development, it has become more challenging for people to coexist peacefully with wildlife.

Ahead of Halloween, the Death By Man photography exhibition showcases the morbid consequences of human activity and rapid urbanisation for these creatures.

It presents portraits of dead animals as obituaries with detailed backstories, some of which photographer Jasvic Lye shares with The Straits Times.

Mrs Lye, 31, is a campaign manager at Our Wild Neighbours, an outreach programme to promote coexistence with Singapore’s native wildlife. The animal lover began the project in 2017, during her final year of studies in Fine Arts in Photography and Digital Imaging at Nanyang Technological University’s School of Art, Design and Media.

She worked with wildlife conservation group Animal Concerns Research and Education Society (Acres), Mandai Wildlife Group and several researchers from the National University of Singapore who gave her tip-offs about animals that had died from man-made causes and also gave her access to the carcasses.

For the exhibition, she chose to give each of the animals a common name for people, to make them more relatable.

“I wanted to cover a local issue that has yet to be communicated to the masses. Also, we tend to turn a blind eye to the reality and threat our wildlife is facing because of how green Singapore is perceived to be,” she said.

The exhibition opened last Friday and will run till April 2024 at the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum.