The Commuters - Artists Notes
These animals are going to work. They commute by subway to 79th Street and Central Park West, where they begin the task of posing as wild animals in the American Museum of Natural History.
This series of photographs re-interprets the definition of wildlife. Photographed at the American Museum of Natural History, these animals are taxidermic specimens. By manipulating the digital image, they have been removed from their "natural” habitat - the museum diorama, and placed in a new “diorama” - the New York City Subway System. Ironically, these wild beasts are not actually real. They are carefully crafted illusions of nature. As museum specimens they are theatrically lit, ferociously posed and dressed with props from their native lands. In their new habitat, they are stripped of their wildness again, and inserted into a manmade landscape where they become unavoidably anthropomorphized. It is wildlife twice removed.
The Commuters juxtaposes the hyper-idealized exoticism of the diorama with the mundane and common daily commute evoking humor, absurdity, sadness and irony. A sly critique on what we consider natural and authentic, this work expands photography beyond its standard role of recorder of reality by presenting a surreal vision of nature that reflects our own humanity. The result is sometimes funny, sometimes sad and very often absurd