FAUNA

FAUNA, FRIEND AND FAUX is a portfolio of black-and-white, medium format images made with plastic Holgas over the last ten years. As I've collected the pictures for a dozen different projects in as many cities in the US and elsewhere, the common thread through all is the presence of animals in my path---whether in Inner Mongolia or Brooklyn, New York---and in various representations around me, on billboards, balloons and bus benches. Faux fauna are ceramic or rubber or merely paint; they're carved from marble or built from styrofoam; they're cartoons and caricatures and fiercely lifelike replicas. They're useful to advertisers and brand marketeers, landscape architects and grade-school teachers. Their faux versions stand in for our hopes and terrors, our worship of strength and speed, and our need to love unconditionally. Friendly fauna watch quietly from behind gates and windows as I pass on the sidewalk; sometimes they bark and shout, but seem no less amiable for their display of top-dog exuberance. They skitter and flap away as I moved toward their breadcrumb conventions, and they peer curiously when I edge closer with my camera, before they bound away in a feline dash. We're mostly on our own out there, me as I wander and they in their yards or flocks, and we dance around one another for a minute or two while the adults are all elsewhere, somewhere inside, doing meaningful labor.