This series deals with animals and their portraiture, and the anthropomorphic quality brought to them by John J. Audubon. Due to the primitive state of photography at that time one was unable to capture the movement of animals in their natural surroundings, so it was up to naturalists as artist/naturalist/hunter to go forth and paint and sketch an animals portrait as document of its existence. Though this often meant that Audubon had to trap or kill his subjects in order to accurately render and document them he did warn against over-hunting and loss of habitat as he had witnessed species he had recorded become extinct. Despite some errors in field observation, he made an enormous contribution to field ecology. A famous observational error in his field notes he wrote that while rendering an adolescent screech owl he wondered why it had been named so as it was one of the quietest birds he had ever spent time with and wondered if it made a sound at all.

These pieces combine the portrait aesthetic of Victorian portraiture with that of engraved images of animal study. By the mid 19th Century it became more economical for people to have their portrait taken as by a photographer rather than being painted or drawn by an artist. I’m interested in relating a narrative that can be found in early photography where one is clued in to who the person is or was by what they were posed with, holding, wearing, etc. I have found the stiff quality and formalizing of subject to be very humorous at a time when so much in the world was in progressive state and moving forward, and yet still so much was standing still.