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- Poodle Parlour
- Nancy Honey
- One Picture Books
- 2008
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- In Almost Every Picture #8
- Hironori Akutagawa
- KesselsKramer
- 2009
A Japanese rabbit whose unusually flat head made it ideal for balancing objects.
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- Trails
- Takashi Homma
- MACK
- 2009
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- Bird Watching
- Paula McCartney
- Princeton Architectural Press
- 2010
A spotted wren perches on the limb of a pine tree in a field of daisies. A song sparrow stands ready to take flight from a snow-covered limb against a winter landscape. For many, these descriptions depict quintessential experiences of nature. As photographs in a bird-watcher s field journal they become something else entirely. Precious and desirable for being so rare, they transform into a kind of trophy that rewards the birdwatcher for his or her skill, tireless patience, and mastery over nature. At first glance, conceptual artist Paula McCartney's Bird Watching seems to be a most exemplary specimen of a birdwatching journal. Handwritten notations recording species, location, size, and markings describe well-rendered and flawlessly composed photographs of a wide variety of passerines, or perching birds, in their natural settings in locations across the United States. Page after page of the most wonderfully diverse species of birds are perfectly posed in picturesque natural settings—a bird-watcher's dream.
On second glance, however, the birds appear a bit too carefully arranged amid the tangle of brush and branches. An even closer look reveals stiff wire protrusions mounting each bird to its perch, matted tufts of overdyed faux feathers forming wings and splashes of paint creating eyes and beaks. McCartney has activated her atmospheric landscapes by adding synthetic decorative birds purchased at craft stores. This startling revelation has you wondering if the artificial might ultimately be more satisfying than the natural. Part document and part fiction, Paula McCartney's Bird Watching is a fanciful, homespun field guide to a woodland twilight zone where our unconscious need to control nature is indulged and our search for an unattainable ideal natural experience is fulfilled. Featuring a design that mimics the tactility of a real bird-watching journal and including essays by Darius Himes and Karen Irvine, this book will appeal to the dreamy naturalist in all of us.→more -
- In Almost Every Picture #9
- Erik Kessels
- KesselsKramer
- 2010
A family struggling with one of the biggest mysteries in photography: How to shoot my black dog?
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- Some Insects
- Terri Weifenbach
- One Picture Books
- 2010
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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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- Misao the Big Mama and Fukumaru the Cat
- Miyoko Ihara
- Little More
- 2011
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- Nekopathy
- Masayuki Nakaya
- Zen Foto Gallery
- 2011
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- Swarm
- Lukas Felzmann
- Lars Müller Publishers
- 2012
“The buzz word is swarm intelligence, which has acquired an unforeseen reality in the era of Facebook and Twitter. The behavior of a collective without a center has become a social phenomenon, which is not only of interest to natural scientists, but also particularly to politicians and economists.” (Peter Pfrunder in his contribution to the book) Swarm is a breathtaking photographic series exploring the flock movements of migrating birds. The photographs offer a unique view of the beauty but also the complexity and diversity of shape variations. A swarm sitting on the ground mirrors the surface of the earth like a skin, but as soon as it lifts up it becomes a fluid three-dimensional system in constant flux. This aerial ballet reveals a rhythm of upward explosion and downward, cascading movement. At times the forms seem to explode, blooming like flowers or expanding outward like fireworks. At other times they appear more stable, slowly drifting like a negative image of stellar constellations. Swarm looks up into the sky and follows flight through the dynamic landscape of streams of air.
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- Anima
- Charlotte Dumas
- Mart. Spruijt bv, Amsterdam
- 2012
Anima features the caisson horses of Arlington National Cemetery in the United States. This is the national burial ground where U.S. service members are buried, and is located outside the country’s capital city of Washington, D.C.
These animals are among the few left to perform a duty for mankind that dates back centuries. No longer used in warfare as such, they now have the sole and exclusive privelege of accompanying soldiers to their final resting place.
Dumas photographed these horses when their working day was done, as they were falling asleep in front of her eyes and camera. The horses not only convey their vulnerability at rest, but also reflect a falling, the losing of consciousness. Dumas: “As I spent time with them at night I felt this was maybe one of the most intimate and private moments to witness: the gap between wakefulness and slumber, a space for dreaming and reverie.”→more -
- Animal Farm
- Daniel Naudé
- Prestel Publishing
- 2012
For years Daniel Naudé has traversed South Africa’s countryside recording his travels as a way of understanding South Africa and its complexities. Among his most arresting subjects are animals, and the collection of images in this book is as beautiful as it is intriguing. The penetrating stare of a feral Africanis dog; the regal dignity of enormous horned cattle; farmers bottle-feeding a lamb, clutching a young donkey, or stolidly leading their goats to pasture—all are photographed against the backdrop of South Africa’s rolling hills, grasslands, and seashore. As Naudé’s muted colors contrast with the animals’ stark silhouettes, viewers are compelled to share his intrepid curiosity about the nature of human dominion over animals, and about how the histories of all living things are intertwined and indivisible.
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- Pet Pictures
- Stephen Shore
- One Picture Books
- 2012
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- Pferde & Autos
- Clara Bahlsen
- Self published
- 2012
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- Kuragari
- Masaru Tatsuki
- self published
- 2013
In ancient times, beast and man co-existed in the darkness. These photographs tap into our collective ancestral memories.
"I can sense someone's eyes looking at me from somewhere unknown.
So I stop and shine my light into the darkness. It is a deer.
Its presence, standing there, is imposing. The deer is looking over at me. It seems to perceive my fear.
Slowly my anxiety begins to ease and I begin to feel accepted into the nighttime forest."
― from the artist's afterword→more