Eyes Open Slowly

Eyes Open Slowly investigates the complexity of the relationship between human and animal through the critical lens of taxidermy.

These images are from the series Eyes Open Slowly, which employs the prism of taxidermy to investigate the tangled and often paradoxical relationship between human and animal. The work speaks to the common nature of human life and animal life and how that commonality manifests in our shared destiny of death.

Animals possess a natural magnetism and taxidermy perpetuates the illusion of animal presence, providing an intimate experience that is impossible in real life. Yet the animal/object dichotomy of taxidermy can be unsettling and disorienting. We are in awe of what appears to be animal, yet the actual animal is gone. Death is inherent to taxidermy and so a sense of loss or grief is part of each encounter.

I have entered this world to investigate animal essence and the emotional and psychological complexities that arise from reanimations of that essence. Whether photographing animals in the process of “becoming” or deploying abstraction to complicate the reading of surface, the work uncovers our longing to connect to the natural world. At the same time, it poses difficult questions about our urge to possess and immortalize it through the act of killing.