Why Look at Animals?

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Why Look at Animals?

The relationships between humans and the other animals on our planet are complex and profound. The photographs we make of animals reflect this complexity; they can be treasured aides-memoires or objects of science, humor, beauty, or fear. Images of animals can evoke the powerful energy of symbols. They can make us laugh. In them, we often see ourselves.

From September 23, 2006 through January 7, 2007, the Brackett Clark and South Galleries will be transformed into the zoo, the jungle, the farm, the family hearth, the laboratory, the slaughterhouse, and myriad other sites of human engagement with the rest of the animal kingdom. Why Look at Animals?, titled after the seminal 1980 essay of art historian John Berger, incorporates both a survey of the Museum‚s extensive holdings from the 19th through 21st centuries and a selection of contemporary works that explore how and why animals are featured in photographs. An additional section encourages community participation through the submission of such photographs as pet memorials, animals dressed as people, and people dressed as animals. Please click here for more information about submitting pet photos.

Including such treasures as the Compte de Montizon's 1852 salted paper print of the hippopotamus at the Regent's Park Zoo and selections from Eadweard Muybridge's Animal Locomotion, the exhibition also embraces work by 20th-century masters Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau, Eliot Porter, and Edward Weston. Images of pets, champion pigs, and other creatures offer a historical yet vernacular understanding of animals, complementing recently acquired work by Henry Horenstein, Jules Greenberg, and William Wegman. Additional contemporary pieces on display include selections from three series Barbara Norfleet's Manscape With Beasts, Rebecca Norris Webb's The Glass Between Us, and John Divola's Dogs Chasing My Car in the Desert while artist Forest McMullin offers his luminous meditations on the beauty of roadkill. Harri Kallio, the young Finnish recipient of last year's European Book Prize, brings an installation based on five years of research into the extinct dodo, undertaken throughout natural history museums as well as on Mauritius, the bird's habitat when alive. Frank Noelker's moving portrait studies of aged chimpanzees, retired from lives in science or show business, add a somber note to Toshie Takeuchi's anime-like fantasy world of space ships and animal costumes. The anthropomorphic giant bunnies of Chip Simons lend a touch of the humorous and surreal.

"A theme as broad as this one offers numerous opportunities to consider how we use photographs to connect to the world," says Alison Nordström, Curator of Photographs and leader of the curatorial team that developed this show. "It offers our public fresh and compelling slices of both our historical holdings and the world of contemporary art that manifest the humor, horror, and delight with which we address our environment and fellow creatures."

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