Our relationship with animals is fraught and contradictory: we simultaneously mythologize, venerate, sacrifice, and exploit those who are not of our species. This paradox suggests that our connection with animals might be more complicated, and far richer, than commonly thought, and that the distinction between human and animal is not at all clear-cut. By laying down a novel artistic and theoretical framework, Animality, devised by Jens Hoffmann in conjunction with Marian Goodman Gallery, looks to examine this complex relationship. Written to accompany an exhibition of the same name, it includes more than seventy participants, mostly from the world of art, but also covering film, literature, philosophy, and science.
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- Animality
- Jens Hoffmann
- Marian Goodman Gallery
- 2017
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- Dromaius-鳥
- Hisako Sakurai
- Self published
- 2014
"Regarding these birds, evoking images of primitive genes, one is carried back in time to an ancient world. In the gentle light in the forest, the sight of these grotesque-eyed lanky birds standing motionless causes time to stand still, creating the illusion that they could even lead me to the era of the dinosaurs. It is a vista that calls to mind the primordial earth.
With such sentiments, I gaze on this scene as I timidly approach the birds, and find a most unexpected comical aspect to them. As they run, they direct their gaze upward at the other birds sounding their lovely calls as they fly freely in the sky. Flightless, though possessing wings, they are like the underachievers of the race of birds, oddly pathetic and stirring sympathy. Bathed in abundant pools of light, as they rest their large eyes with a translucent white third eyelid drawn across the orb, their weirdness is accentuated. But conversely to such appearances, their nature is in fact docile. They are creatures incongruent in their outer and inner aspects.
I’ve felt that the ballet movements I was taught as a youngster must have been created in the image of, and in yearning for birds. The aspect of those scaly feet, slowly setting one foot forward and kicking back the ground beneath, lightly, precisely all the way to the tips of the toes. The neck is slender and supple, legs thin and long, the upright form with gay wings of the tutu has a seemliness with nothing extraneous in its movement. As I watched these birds, I felt that surely their movements must be the origin of the dance.
In the process of evolution, these creatures, who chose to run upon the land and survive thus, outstretched their necks and looked up to the sky as though longing for flight. In the same way, the dancers resist gravity, yearning to dance high into the skies above. Each of these, unfolding on their respective stages in their wordless, distinct forms, beckon me to another world."
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- Des oiseaux
- Graciela Iturbide
- Editions Xavier Barral
- 2019
A major figure of Latin-American photography, Graciela Iturbide’s approach combines the documentary and the lyrical. Off-center compositions, graphic effects, and heavy shadows create a poetic universe where a feeling of strangeness is combined with one of harsh reality. The powerful equilibrium of her compositions produces skies filled with birds, comical, unexpected situations where chickens are pictured sitting wisely on market stalls, while elsewhere chirping flocks appear to invade the scene in agile, flowing movements. For Iturbide, living birds represent freedom. But death is never far away in her work, nor indeed is a certain sense of the surreal.
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- A Sensitive Education
- Francesca Todde
- Départ Pour l’Image
- 2020
With A Sensitive Education the photographer Francesca Todde explores, through the figure of bird educator Tristan Plot, the possibilities of empathy between different natural species.
The narrative, far from being a naturalist documentation, is rather focused on the emotional sphere and sensitivity of birds and humans. The photographic research develops in resonance with the delicacy of this wordless dialogue.→more -
- Animals That Saw Me: Volume Two
- Ed Panar
- The Ice Plant
- 2016
Animals That Saw Me: Volume Two pairs a new collection of photographs from the observational wanderings of Ed Panar with an original essay on “being seen” by speculative realist philosopher Timothy Morton. Extending the project Panar began in 2011 with Animals That Saw Me: Volume One, this ‘sequel’ draws from recent work and newly discovered gems from his vast back catalogue to depict a series of brief, shared encounters with various (non-human) species — mammal, reptile, bird, insect — as they seem to behold the (human) photographer. Edited for the viewer’s maximum delight, the pictures embody a whimsical concept with surprisingly complex ramifications under the surface. Why do we distinguish between “us” and “them,” and what exists in the space between these distinctions? What does it mean to make “eye contact” with another species? What does the presence of a camera add to this phenomenon? Channeling the thoughtful humor, wonder and peculiar engagement with the world that made Panar’s first volume an instant hit, this volume revisits and digs deeper into the question: “Why do we assume that it’s only us who does the looking?”
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- Animals That Saw Me: Volume One
- Ed Panar
- The Ice Plant
- 2011
Roaming the natural and urban world with a camera for over 16 years, often alone, on foot, keeping a low profile, Ed Panar has repeatedly been caught in the act of photography—not by other people, but by a random assortment of familiar animals: cows, cats, frogs, dogs, turtles, deer, geese…you name it. The animal sees Ed, and Ed sees the animal; an unspoken communication passes between them. If he’s lucky, the moment is captured on film, catalogued, tagged for future reference. In Animals That Saw Me: Volume One Panar brings together the first collection of his most surprising and unexpected encounters with ordinary fauna—a brief, deadpan field study of the uncanny moment of recognition between species. What exactly have the animals seen? The pictures are a reminder that we must appear as strange and exotic to them as they do to us.
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- Novogen
- Dániel Szalai
- The Eriskay Connection
- 2021
Novogen is a project focusing on the eponymous breed of chickens that was developed in order to use its eggs in the production of pharmaceutical products such as medicines and vaccines. Through the investigation of the industrialised farming of the Novogen White Light chicken, Dániel Szalai (HU) intends to articulate questions and dilemmas regarding technology and man’s relation to nature.
The core of the book is formed by an extensive series of portraits of individual chickens besides photographs documenting the environment of the production facilities and the process of vaccine production. The images are supplemented by a reflective text by philosopher Fahim Amir, a selection of extracts from the management guide of the Novogen White Light and the marketing materials of the company that produces them.
Besides posing questions about our understanding of the natural, Szalai believes that the way these chickens are ‘conceptualised’ can be a metaphor for human positions in the job market, or in the political domain.
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- A Song of Life
- Diana Michener
- Steidl
- 2018
A Song of Life presents Diana Michener’s most recent body of work, poignant photographs of animals that for the artist have become close to self-portraits.
Michener began photographing animals unexpectedly during a trip to India in 2006 where, intimidated by the chaos of the street, she wandered into a zoo and turned her lens to its rhinoceros, elephants and gazelles. Haunted by the resulting images of confinement, Michener became increasingly obsessed with them and decided to expand the project, first at the menagerie at Paris’ Jardin des Plants and later in various zoos throughout Europe and the USA. During her visit to each zoo, Michener remained silent and still for hours in front of the cages, almost in communion with these creatures who take on a close to mythical dignity in her photos.
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- Des oiseaux
- Byung-Hun Min
- Editions Xavier Barral
- 2020
Making visible the silence, the simplicity of nature and a sense of passing time. The photographs of Korean Byung-Hun Min, made between 1998 and 2020 throughout he world, take on the evanescence of a pencil sketch. With their subtle contrasts, their play of silky tones, they seem to show a fleeting instant between clarity and dissolution.
Min’s birds live in an ethereal space. They seem enveloped in a white veil, in a silvery light. The virtual monochromy of the image, the uniformity of the tones, oscillating between white and gray, the absence of perspectives and contrasts, the simplicity of the construction and the minimalism of the forms reproduce a reality that has become fantastical. The photographer’s painstaking work printing each negative allows him to reproduce not only what he saw, but also what he perceived. Min’s birds are an invitation to contemplation.
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- Des oiseaux
- Bernard Plossu
- Editions Xavier Barral
- 2018
Half traveler and half migratory photographer, as he likes to introduce himself, Bernard Plossu strides along the world since many years. He captures through his lens furtive moments, where birds are flying in huge swarms or caught alone, standing proudly in the middle of a puddle, or gliding high up in the sky, among the peaks. The photographer looks at birds with tenderness and curiosity, a gaze which underlines fantasy and a “surrealistic” approach, as explains the critic Francesco Zanot about his images.
The flight fascinates the photographer, obsessed with the euphoric speed of swallows as well as the hypnotic inertness of large raptors drifting through the wind at high altitude. Plossu’s photographs allow us to see fragments of the world, a world in which birds have reinvested our environment.
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- "Click", said the camera.
- Balthasar Burkhard, Markus Jakob
- Lars Müller Publishers
- 2018
The beloved children’s book “Click”, said the camera., first published in 1997, is available again. It features animal portraits by photographer Balthasar Burkhard, who started the series in 1995.
The twenty animals meet for the photographer’s beauty contest. On Burkhard’s portraits all the animals are equally beautiful. The protagonist of the story is a shy donkey watching the cheerful activity. Markus Jakob describes the illustrious rendezvous with kind and humorous words.
Balthasar Burkhard (1944–2010) was a Swiss photographer well-known for his large-format black-and-white photography.
Markus Jakob (born 1954) writes features, reports, and miscellanea for various media.→more -
- Empty Nests
- Atsuko Murano Abalos
- LibroArte
- 2021
“Empty Nests” is a photo series by Japanese artist Atsuko Murano Abalos of stork nests that she discovered during a short stay in the Alsace region in France in fall of 2019. All the nests she found were empty; the birds had already raised their young and embarked on the long journey to Africa. But seeing the many empty nests atop trees, chimneys and other high places, meticulously constructed from flimsy materials to satisfy the needs of their family, stirred something within Murano Abalos.
At first sight, her photographs seem to pay homage to the birds’ craftsmanship, dexterity and ingenuity, or to find humor (and admiration) in the bravery and brazenness of the nests’ locations. But with each turn of the page, new themes emerge and manifest themselves, and soon the photographs reveal a deeper fascination rooted in the emptiness of the nests – as self-constructed homes, as symbols of fertility and family values, as signifiers of hundreds of years of cohabitation.
“When a bird builds a next, it doesn’t waste resources to show someone its taste, preferences, financial strength, social standing, nor to complicate the nest’s function. The bird does not think, nor does it make comments about things like making the nest for nation, for god, or for the environment and society; therefore preventing distractions for potentially making big mistakes. It only knows and acknowledges the needs of its own body, and the need for caring for its children.”
― from Hiroshi Nakamura’s afterword “Capturing the Unseen” (included in Japanese and in English translation)→more -
- Finding Trust
- Annie Marie Musselman
- Kehrer Verlag
- 2013
American photographer Annie Marie Musselman has a series of photographs that are sure to tug at your heart – especially if you're an animal lover. Titled Finding Trust, the photographs show injured wild animals being cared for at a wildlife rehabilitation center. Musselman started shooting the project seven years ago at a small sanctuary 75 miles away from Seattle, called the Sarvey Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. In the process of documenting the animals' lives, she was personally involved with helping the patients as well and in turn they helped heal her from the grief of her mother and father's deaths. Annie Marie Musselman lives in Seattle, Washington. Finding Trust has been featured in several magazines and exhibitions. Her images have been published in American Photography 25, Outside, National Geographic Magazine, Harper Collins, Elle, Travel + Leisure, The New York Times and Newsweek among others. She is represented by Bianco Artist Management. Currently she is working on a project with the wolves of Wolf Haven International, with a comission by the Getty Images Grant for Good. "Coming to Sarvey felt like coming home. The work that I produced there documents the delicate union that exists between humans and animals. These pictures were made with the intention to show the world an upclose view into the faces and souls of these wild animals. To look into their eyes as if looking into our own." Annie Marie Musselman
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- Des oiseaux
- Albarrán Cabrera
- Editions Xavier Barral
- 2020
The poetic universe of Spanish photographers duo Albarrán Cabrera is presented here through a dreamscape journey in the land of birds. Between reality and illusion, their photographs questions our relationship to the tangible world and vibrate gently through a wide palette and different photographic techniques: platinum and palladium prints, cyanotypes, gelatin prints, and pigmented printing…
Each photograph is like a story that seems to have been paused. The birds seem to be straight out of fantastical fairy tales; they merge into space, are revealed on reflective surfaces, and slip into the undergrowth whereas sometimes their physical presence is underlined by a tight framing. The birds are revealed through abstracting shapes sometimes simple dots and shadows. Albarrán Cabrera leave the interpretation of their images to the memory of the viewer and let our imagination fly.
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