AMELIA’S WORLD AND ANIMAL AFFINITY
My photographs are drawn from real journeys undertaken with my daughter in the interspecies private world that we inhabit together with animals of all varieties.
I am driven to depict our relationships with animals in the hope that these moments reverberate. The photographs are not documents; they are evidence of an invented world and the fables we enact in that world. Photography gives me the opportunity to access dreams, to discover the extraordinary.
Animals and interspecies relationships have always been an important part of my work. Animals in my photographs are not represented as beastly, noble, or as props to illustrate human life but as part of our everyday world.
My daughter and I share an affinity with the animal kingdom and we play out our fantasies and explore our eccentricities by creating a cultural space where animals not only co-exist with humans, but also interact as full partners. The animals in the photographs are living creatures, participants in the dramas that the photographs capture. 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.
ROBIN SCHWARTZ earned a Master of Fine Arts in Photography from Pratt Institute and is an Assistant Professor in Photography at William Paterson University of New Jersey. Her photographs are held in several museum collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. and The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
The Aperture Foundation published Schwartz’s third monograph, Amelia’s World, edited by Tim Barber. Images from this series were exhibited at Various Photographs, an installation at The York Photography Festival by Tim Barber and in the traveling exhibition by Flakphoto.com, 100 Portraits.
The Amelia Series photographs were published in magazines including Stern, Germany, Esquire, Russia, H, Spain, Fader, Juxtapoz and in The British Journal Photography and in books as Hayden’s Review, Photographing Childhood by LaNola Stone and Hijacked, vol.1.
Schwartz was a finalist at the Hyeres 2010 Photography Festival in France. In January 2012, she presented the Amelia Series at The National Geographic Magazine’s Annual Photography Seminar in Washington D.C.
Portfolios can be viewed at www.RobinSchwartz.net and www.tinyvices.com