American photographer Emmet Gowin (b. 1941) is best known for his portraits of his wife, Edith, and their family, as well as for his images documenting the impact of human activity upon landscapes around the world. For the past fifteen years, he has been engaged in an equally profound project on a different scale, capturing the exquisite beauty of more than one thousand species of nocturnal moths in Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, French Guiana, and Panama.
These stunning color portraits present the insects—many of which may never have been photographed as living specimens before, and some of which may not be seen again—arrayed in typologies of twenty-five per sheet. The moths are photographed alive, in natural positions and postures, and set against a variety of backgrounds taken from the natural world and images from art history.
Throughout Gowin’s distinguished career, his work has addressed urgent concerns. The arresting images of Mariposas Nocturnas extend this reach, as Gowin fosters awareness for a part of nature that is generally left unobserved and calls for a greater awareness of the biodiversity and value of the tropics as a universally shared natural treasure. An essay by Gowin provides a fascinating personal history of his work with biologists and introduces both the photographic and philosophical processes behind this extraordinary project.
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- Mariposas Nocturnas: Moths of Central and South America, A Study in Beauty and Diversity
- Emmet Gowin
- Princeton University Press
- 2017
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- A Cat Catcher in The Rye
- Miyazaki Tsuyoshi
- Sokyusha
- 2017
With remarkable intimacy and dignity, Miyazaki Tsuyoshi portrays cats in her neighbourhood. Rather than a collection of cute cat pictures, Cat Catcher in the Rye meets its subjects at eye-level, at times giving the illusion that wanted their lives documented.
I take photographs of cats because I love them.
But the fate of a stray or abandoned cat is a grim one.
No matter how exquisite the light
It is this thought that looms when I look at them.
So I find the cats around me that need help
and then I take the photographs.― Statement from the artist
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- Animal Books for Jaap Zeno Anna Julian Luca
- Lous Martens
- Roma Publications
- 2017
Lous Martens about the book: "Seventeen years ago our grandson Jaap was born. That was the start of an animal book for Jaap. I used a dummy for the OASE journal of architecture and loosely pasted in pictures of animals that I had clipped from newspapers and magazines about art, literature and science. Plus stamps and photos from advertising brochures. Then Zeno was born and the same thing happened: an animal book for Zeno. Now I was working on two books at once. Then came Anna. Julian. Luca. At this point, there were five books-in-the-making on the table. And none of those five are finished yet. The children, as well as myself, enjoy seeing the small, ever-evolving changes. The additions. These books were never intended for the outside world where I had found all the pictures. Never intended to be published. Now they lie here, grouped into one big book, because others have convinced me it's what they deserve."
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- Animality
- Jens Hoffmann
- Marian Goodman Gallery
- 2017
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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- Appetite for the Magnificent
- Tania Willen, David Willen, Jörg Scheller
- Edition Patrick Frey
- 2017
Appetite for the Magnificent is a photographic and essayistic exploration of the history and present-day world of the aquarium. David and Tania Willen focus their lenses on the pictorial, aesthetic dimension of present-day aquariums in Swiss zoos and Switzerland’s high-end aquarium scene: public and private labs in which “aquascapers” design animal-vegetable-mineral gardens of aqueous delights. These moving-picture aquascapes float between the poles of reality and virtuality, presence and absence, the animate and inanimate world. The fish swimming around in the tank may be present as living, breathing creatures, and yet we also perceive them through the glass as images of fish. In the Willens’ photographs, all shot from the front, the fish seem suspended in mid-air, an effect that brings to the fore the virtual side of the aquarium: it is nothing short of a precursor to the television set.
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- Beyond Drifting: Imperfectly Known Animals
- Mandy Barker
- Overlapse
- 2017
Plankton form a diverse group of microscopic marine organisms that are unable to swim against powerful ocean currents; they exist in a drifting, floating state, enveloped in the black deep.
As fragile as they are, current scientific research shows that plankton ingest microplastic particles, mistaking them for food. Plankton are a crucial source of food for larger creatures up the food chain – compounding the grave impact of plastics on marine life and, ultimately, humans. Plastic debris is now ubiquitous in the Anthropocene, the period since humanity has had a significant impact on our global environment, and today nearly all living creatures are affected by its widespread contamination.
The plankton specimens in this work are beautifully photographed objects of marine plastic debris, recovered from the same location as naturalist John Vaughan Thompson’s plankton samples from 200 years ago. Long-exposure photographs record movements of recovered plastic objects floating in a black void, captured on expired film and with faulty cameras. Film grain is intentionally visible, alluding to microplastic particles being ingested. Each specimen has a new scientific name reflecting early Latin origins and containing the word ‘plastic’ hidden within its title.
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- Die Anthropomorpha: Tiere im Krieg
- Malin Gewinner
- Matthes & Seitz Berlin
- 2017
Fallschirmspringende Hunde, ferngesteuerte Haie, Raketen, die von Tauben gelenkt werden, Katzen mit implantierten Abhörgeräten : In diesem Buch geht es um Tiere, die der Mensch zu Kriegsteilnehmern gemacht hat. Die militärische Nutzung von Tieren spielt seit Anbeginn der Kriegsgeschichte eine entscheidende Rolle. Tiere sind ständige Wegbegleiter, jedoch keineswegs ebenbürtige Partner der Menschen. 32 erstaunliche, skurrile und bizarre Tiersoldaten dieses Buches zeigen, dass der Mensch keine Grenzen kennt, wenn es darum geht, sich gegenüber dem Feind einen Vorteil zu verschaffen. Woher kommt die Selbstsicherheit, mit der der Mensch sich die Fähigkeiten der Tiere zunutze macht ? Welche Konsequenzen hat das für Mensch und Tier, und wie und warum gerät der Vormachtsglaube der Menschen gerade zu Kriegszeiten ins Wanken?
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- Inhabitants
- Andrea Buzzichelli
- Urbanautica Books
- 2017
This publication stems from a photographic survey conducted by Andrea Buzzichelli during 2015 in the National Park of Casentinesi Forests, Italy. Starting from the collection of archival materials made by the National Forest Service and the Canilupus association for wildlife monitoring, the Tuscan photographer creates his vision expresses of the forest and the animal life that lives there. These images, not at all descriptive, catapult the gaze into a forbidden, mysterious, and obscure imaginary world. The boundary between the acquired and built image is erased. The casual bestiary produced by photo traps blends with the artist’s introspective views of nature and vegetation. The project as a whole expresses a sense of intrusive power in an otherwise unviable world, as well as a voyeuristic approach to nature. Upon careful viewing, the book ‘Inhabitants’ reveals the humanness of its very nature; of an anthropocentric posture eradicated and sometimes extraneous to the environment. With no particular reference to time, the author carries us into a dimension that has to do more with feeling than seeing. It’s in this “blind” perspective that Buzzichelli realizes his homage to the pioneering work of George Shiras III.
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- Ravens
- Masahisa Fukase
- MACK
- 2017
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- Turn Down Center Line
- Pernilla Zetterman
- Kerber Verlag
- 2017
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- The Chosen Ones
- Hendrik Zeitler
- Journal Photobooks
- 2016
”There is nothing so expressive as the eyes of animals—especially apes—which seem objectively to mourn that they are not human.”
Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory19 portraits, taken between 2002 and 2015 in Sweden, with an afterword, In the eyes of the Other, by Camilla Flodin.
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- Afterword
- Masahisa Fukase
- roshin books
- 2016
"Afterword" is composed of photos used in the afterword 'Sasuke's Diary' from Sasuke, My Dear Cat, published by Seinen Shokan in 1978. In the small pocket-sized printing manuscript were instructions and numbering written by Fukase himself.
Sasuke the First went missing quite early on, but some time afterwards, someone who had seen the ‘missing’ posters delivered a kitten to Fukase thinking it was probably Sasuke. While they did indeed look alike, the kitten turned out not to be Sasuke after all.
Fukase, however, named this kitten Sasuke and ended up loving him like his own. To Harajuku, on express trains, and even to Ueno Zoo and the seaside - he took Sasuke out with him wherever he went. Referring to himself ‘papa’ while turning his camera upon Sasuke, the depth of Fukase’s affection for his cat can be felt through his photos of its charming visage.
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- 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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- Daughter
- Koji Kitagawa
- Self published
- 2016
"This book contains 264 images of the guinea pig family.
The images are focused on a daughter."→more -
- Field Guide to Birds of the West Indies
- Taryn Simon
- Hatje Cantz
- 2016
In 1936, an American ornithologist named James Bond published the definitive taxonomy Birds of the West Indies. Ian Fleming, an active bird-watcher living in Jamaica, appropriated the name for his novel’s lead character. He found it “flat and colourless,” a fitting choice for a character intended to be “anonymous. . . a blunt instrument in the hands of the government.”
In Field Guide to Birds of the West Indies, Taryn Simon (*1975) casts herself as James Bond (1900–1989) the ornithologist, and identifies, photographs, and classifies all the birds that appear within the twenty-four films of the James Bond franchise. The appearance of many of the birds was unplanned and virtually undetected, operating as background noise for whatever set they happened to fly into. Simon’s ornithological discoveries occupy a liminal space—confined within the fiction of the James Bond universe and yet wholly separate from it. This taxonomy of 331 birds is a precise consideration of a new nature found in an alternate reality.→more