Photography: Marc Cellier

I recently came across Marc Cellier's nocturnal scenes of the French countryside in which a few familiars are made strange.  The scenes are illuminated by street lights in village on the outskirts of Paris. Apparently Cellier acquired the animals from hunters in his native Cévennes region.  Read more on ARTINFO here +

Taxidermy Photographers: Karen Knorr

Have you already seen Karen Knorr's photographs from her Fable series.  If not, you should because they are remarkably beautiful, crisp, and haunting.  Here is a little sampling.

Her photographs use taxidermy as well as live animals, analog photography as well as some digital remixing, which gives the scenes an unreal hybrid sort of reality.  From here Knorr's website:

"The usual aim of the fable is to teach a lesson by drawing attention to animal behaviour and its relationship to human actions and shortcomings. Animals in fables speak metaphorically of human folly, criticizing human nature. Yet it seems that the nature of Karen Knorr’s work has another aim. In  Knorr’s  “Fables”  the animals are not dressed up to resemble humans nor do they illustrate any explicit  moral. Liberated, they roam freely in human territory  drawing attenton to  the unbridged gap between nature and culture.

To see more of Knorr's photographs, visit her website at http://www.karenknorr.com/photographs/fables/

Nicolas Lamas

An amazing artist I`ve just stumbled upon: Nicolas Lamas.  I'll be posting a more complete view of the amazing photographs of Nicolas Lamas in the next few days, but here is a brief preview:

Fox, Flames, and Chesterfields

I wish I could show you Jody Fausett's image of a stuffed fox beautifully posed in front of a chesterfield engulfed in flames or a lonely fawn sitting on a vinyl sofa with a remote control by her side.  But I can't.  The gallery's website won't let me download the images. You can however see Fausett's images here: http://www.whitespace814.com/artist_jody.html. 

Mounted Life

Oh my goodness ... my new favourite taxidermy photographer!  Check out the beautiful work of Amsterdam artist Danielle van Ark.  See more of her work at http://www.daniellevanark.com/index.html.

 

Martin d'Orgeval's Touched by Fire Series

 

As many of you may already know, on February 1st, 2008 at five in the morning, a fire burned through Deyrolle, the famous Parisienne collections of natural history.  The above and below photographs are by Martin d'Orgeval's appropriately titled Touched by Fire series was featured in my new favourite paper The Drawbrige which had the following things to say:

"Martin d'Orgeval's photographs show the animals and insects that survived the disaster in situ, against a background of charred woodwork in the shop that had been their habitat since their "natural" death. The objects and the location form an entire work, the result of a strange, unique process in which creation, conservation and destruction have followed on from one another – a process completed and given closure by photography."

A limited edition of d'Orgeval's photographs are available here at http://www.artbook.com/9783865218551.html

Imagining Fauna

Several years ago, Mary Frey was captured by the sad beauty of old, perhaps neglected taxidermy at the Springfield Science Museum.  In turn she captures that emotion on film with an ambrotype process that mimic the gentle fragility of the creatures themselves.  In her own words:

Photography invites us to pay attention. It describes with economy, precision and detail. It enables us to stare, scrutinize, and become voyeurs. Taxidermy allows us to do the same. Its complete replication of an animal’s stance, gesture and look provides us a way to study and comprehend its existence. Yet I find that these animals, often portrayed in suspended animation, seem simultaneously strange, ghostly and beautiful. Their gaze is both familiar and unknown. I intend this work to move beyond what is merely seen to the territory of the imagination, where what is remembered and known is transformed into something new.

Check out her website here + http://www.maryfrey.com/fauna/index.htm#title  to see more of her taxidermy works.

Richard Barnes' dioramas

A few images from photographer Richard Barnes' phtographic series entitled Animal Logic. See all of his photographs here http://www.richardbarnes.net/animallogic01.html