Robin Schwartz | Aperture Deerline. Catskill Game Farm, Catskill New York. 2005.
“The ‘Amelia & the Animals’ photographs are drawn from actual journeys undertaken with my daughter in the interspecies private world that
(...) we inhabited with animals, of all varieties, over the past 15 years. The world that my daughter and I explore is one where the line between human and animal overlaps or is blurred, where animals are part of our world and humans are part of theirs. Amelia and I play out our fantasies and explore our eccentricities to create a cultural space in the photographs where animals not only coexist with humans, but also interact as full partners. Amelia is smart, tough, and brave enough to calmly cajole animals. (It’s important for me to note that Amelia is connecting with real, live, animals. No one is photoshopped into the images.)
In ‘Deerline,’ Amelia was purchasing corn in ice cream waffle cones and the male deer understood that corn in ice cream waffle cones had to be bought. The female deer only came up to Amelia when the males—because their antlers’ velvet was shedding—were sectioned off. Each animal is seen and experienced as an individual, part of our everyday world, participating in the dramas the photographs capture.”
- Robin Schwartz © Robin Schwartz
