Photo Friday with Tim Flach’s More than Human 

English photographer Tim Flach  thins the line between animals and humans with a stunning series called More than Human. He captures panthers, pandas, gorillas, and other animals, and demonstrates that they exhibit a depth of emotion that we may not have expected. These photos beg the questions of how different, if at all, are we from these animals. How different is the look of a bat when threatened and the expression we may have when on guard, or a baboon’s gaze of inquiry and our own expressed curiousity?

Flach further humanizes these animals by taking them out of the environment we are used to seeing them in and bringing them into a studio. Perhaps as any new subject, the animals express discomfort in this unnatural environment, and he placates them with music and by adjusting the temperature. There is a careful and patient process to these portraits because, as we may expect, the subjects are unpredictable and don’t take to direction in quite the same way.

As stated on the artist’s website, there is also a playfulness to these photos:

“Tim Flach’s bestiary evokes pathos, humour and an unmistakably intimate human empathy. Not only do we begin to find supposedly repellent creatures charming, but discover a sympathetic vulnerability, an unexpected lightness and humour in their gestures and attitudes, as if putting on a performance for our benefit in a readily accessible comedy of manners all their own.”

Mitch Payne

Amberlee Rosolowich

Amberlee Rosolowich’s most recent works have been influenced by her youth. As she describes, her “work is inspired by a hidden and quiet side of my childhood; juxtaposing peculiar and darker experiences with the imaginary protection of animals. Fearful moments, made brighter by sharing and understanding secrets with animal ‘friends’. These paintings of life moments are augmented and playfully set along with current stories of my present. In some pieces the animals themselves are able to share the emotions that often seem minute.” 

Jennilee Murray

In this series, Animalia/Victus, artist Jennilee Murray combines animals with food. As the artists describes this hybrid, “The series is a fanciful look at what-ifs and curiosities—documenting flora and fauna indigenous to the land of childhood fantasy.”

Murray’s work carries questions, “What if we harvested peas from the tail of a fennec fox? What if neither of these things were seen as food?” Animalis/Victus is not so much a dialogue on the current food situation or any specific way of eating, as it is an innocent, child-like search into the realm of impossibility and suspended disbelief. 

Peter Carrington

Peter Carrington, an illustrator from Manchester, makes artworks about  science, natural history and his struggle to gain knowledge. As Carrington states, 

“I’ve always had an interest in science and nature, and during my studies I decided to combine this with my practice. Through deeper research into different scientific areas it quickly became apparent that, due to having dyslexia, I was never going to get a grip of the topics to make work that wasn’t shallow and ill-informed. I became frustrated that I wouldn’t be able to use the visual language of the sciences that I had become obsessed with. It was at this point that this frustration became the forefront of the work and the drawings became a portrait of me and my struggle with dyslexia. I began using the visuals of science and natural history journals to create seemingly scientific illustrations.”

Moritz Resl’s Polytrauma

Moritz Resl, a multi-disciplinary artist who is currently enrolled in the MFA Art and Science at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, spent several months at the Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology in Vienna to create his series Polytrauma. As the artist describes the experience, 

“As an artist, entering a scientific environment, my goal was to become acquainted with the field and the specific everyday routine of the institute by using ethnographic research with an understanding of participatory observation. Within these months I was able to be part of several surgeries and pathological investigations.”

Resl’s pieces is a visual oscillation between understanding and questioning his observations and findings, especially the importance of using protocols during the production of scientific facts. How much of science is interpretation?

Charlotte Caron

In this series of portraits, Charlotte Caron focuses on the complexity of human nature. We are one part civilized and one part wild. As Caron cites the theories by Antoine Spire, we are attracted to human similarities in animals, and we are also attracted to the idea of the bestial human. 

The idea of using mixed media for a portrait is also a rather unique combination. As Caron describes these works,

“The goal is to ultimately create an osmosis between the two mediums [painting and photography], similar to that between the animal and the human.”