For me, the sense of romance that accompanies photography has yet to be lost. Perhaps it’s because I started taking pictures at a young age; my entry into photography was purely about capturing simple scenes and moments happening around me. It makes me think of the line from Lost in Translation, “I tried taking pictures, but they were so mediocre. I guess every girl goes through a photography phase. You know, horses… taking pictures of your feet.”

When I see photography that’s quiet and uncomplicated, pictures that look like they were made with a disposable camera just for the purpose of documenting those little things in the world that feel like magic, I feel so nostalgic. And that’s how I feel looking at Roslyn Julia’s series Exist. The photos, taken over the span of nearly a decade, depict animals, nature, changes in season and place. She writes, “The focus of this work… can be seen as a metaphor depicting the nature of a human soul.”

From the artist’s statement: Nature holds the power to reflect messages or moods back to the viewer, to touch the part of one’s being which it mirrors. Photography holds the power to seize in an instant an energy that is timeless and omnipresent. These images show an invisible line between my own existence and the subjects; two energy fields meeting to become one, even if only for that moment. This is a phenomenon only a camera can make possible. The images turn present to past with the click of a shutter; yet allow the past to live on in the present.

Through the frame of a still image, the capture of pure energy and emotion can become a lasting visual and tangible experience. “Exist” shares seemingly ordinary, daily moments in order to reveal their extraordinary nature. By taking the time to pause an ever moving and changing existence, what is revealed is the eternal, fleeting nature and spirit found in a single moment.

Visit artist site: roslynjulia.com

“There is a longing to know our selves through animals. Animals make us more human.” I love these lines from Kendra Bulgrin’s artist statement. Kendra, whose work, more broadly, “examines the longing for identity” and questions “how identity is constructed through images, place, memory, decoy, and the miniature,” approached me last summer about an exhibition she was curating. I didn’t know then that she is a wonderful artist herself. I loved getting to learn about Kendra’s paintings when she emailed me a few months ago to submit her work to Muybridge’s Horse.

Kendra very frequently depicts animals in her paintings, and in her new work featured here, hunting decoys. The decoys and their counterparts make me think of scenes from a dollhouse, dolls and and other miniatures. Looking through her work, particularly Wisconsin Home followed by Longing & Belonging, I found myself remembering a favorite book from my childhood for the first time in many years – Pam Conrad’s The Tub People, illustrated by Richard Egielski. I see the whimsy and playfulness, as well as the slightly macabre quality, of the story so clearly in the paintings. Both are haunting and sad, telling about wonder and curiosity paired with aloneness and loss.

From the artist’s statement: I have always been interested in the metaphorical implications of simulation and mimesis. The decoys are life-sized, meant to mimic nature and often used in hunting to lure in or get closer to wild animals. I have been thinking a lot about how humans long to be closer to nature and continually return to it as a place of rejuvenation as we become increasingly detached from the natural world. Yet actual closeness with wild animals is difficult or nearly impossible to achieve except in captivity. I use the decoys as metaphors for my own feelings of detachment from family, nature, memory and my own natural roots and my desire to feel connected. These methods of working with the miniature, decoy, place, and photography allowed me to distance myself, yet at the same time create an idealized nearby place for my longing.

Visit artist site: kendrabulgrin.com

Sebastian Sardi began photographing coal mining communities in eastern India in 2008. In viewing his stark, weighty pictures, you can almost feel a layer of dust forming on your skin, smell the smoke and fire as the ground burns. Images and stories of people “digging in the soil with their bare hands” usually makes one think of hard yet meaningful labor, the rewards of working with the land, pride in feeling connected to the resources that keep us alive. But Sardi’s photos make me incredibly sad. The burning of coal to produce energy is a major contributor to global warming, and individuals and communities are harmed as people are forced to relocate as the ground beneath their feet is extracted. Sardi writes about the “fragile balance between nature and mankind,” and photos like these ultimately make me think of nothing but how when we harm our land we are truly an deeply harming ourselves.

Black Diamond will soon be published as a book in collaboration with German publisher Kehrer Verlag.

From the artist’s statement: It is an apocalyptic landscape. There are huge man-made craters everywhere that make up the visible landscape, the ground is burning, and a vast area is oozing with toxic gases, fire and smoke. Amongst all of this, there are people digging in the soil with their bare hands. Coal is mined everywhere in Jharkhand, India, and large parts of it is sorted by hand. The locals call it; “Black Diamond.” Energy produced by the burning of coal is the single biggest contributor to the man-generated carbon dioxide emissions. Coal is a major part in the issue of global warming. Many people have been forced away from these areas when companies and authorities recognized the richness that hides in the ground. Underground fires force people to relocate. The mining companies claim they are unable to put out the fires, while the locals blame the companies for letting the fires burn so the coal can be reached and excavated from underneath their villages. There is a fragile balance between nature and mankind. A sense of discomfort is felt in the slow but seemingly unavoidable struggle towards the collapse of nature. The human inability to break patterns is painstakingly visible in these photographs, as we knowingly keep on extracting the ground beneath our own feet. “Black Diamond” is a close (self-)portrait of the people who work with extracting coal from the ground, as well as an exploration of our dualistic human nature and how one self relates to the outside world while being a part of it.

Visit artist site: sebastiansardi.com

When Luis Castelo emailed me some of his photos, I was attracted to their odd colors and lighting and their intense selective focus. I spent quite a while looking at the pictures before I read that this series, Historiae Naturalis, is an example of the artist’s broad use of the “scannography” technique when making interpretations of nature. I don’t know how he does it. I cannot figure out how these images were made with a scanner, but I’m so intrigued.

From the artist’s statement: Our bond with the animal world is evident. In spite of a gradual distancing of this relation during the XX century, we are now witnessing the necessary reunion with our distant relations. We had to wait for the scientism of the XIX century to explain the existence of these animals, which, until then, we had only heard about in myths and legends. The determination of scientists and naturalists of the age to explain the world resulted in a huge representation of animals from distant colonies overseas. Scientific expeditions were at their peak and the search for and classification of both unknown territories and their flora and fauna was highly favoured.

Embalming has a close relationship to photography since both embalm time and life in one instant forever. The attempt to offer a suggestion of life in death by freezing poses or gestures links taxidermy intimately and necessarily to photography. Embalming photography represents naturalized beings in two ways: it leaves death in suspense through the gaze of the subject photographed and offers an everlasting vision of the ephemeral lives of living creatures through the representation of “still lives,” in both cases, after all, vanitas.

Visit artist site: luiscastelo.com

There’s a Peter Marlow photo that I love, “A bear sits alone in a pit in Kaliningrad zoo,” taken in Russia. The moment when I saw Sheng Wen Lo’s series White Bear, I thought of this image. It’s curious how pictures like these have the power to incite intense emotions in the viewer, when generally people do not seem to be upset experiencing what’s depicted firsthand.

When I reached out to Sheng, he sent me a comprehensive press kit, and I pored over every file inside. Reading his thoughts and writings about his work was fascinating, and I feel that many of his ideas will affect the way I think about animals and the making of my own photography. There’s so much that I want to share. In the spirit of treating this space as a collection of the artwork I love, and compiling all the information I can find about it, I’ll break the format I traditionally use and begin with Sheng’s artist statement.

From the artist’s statement: “White Bear” depicts polar bears on display and their artificial habitats globally; the project attempts to engage with dilemmas concerning captive animal programs. It has been executed in 26 sites across Europe and China.

“White Bear” is not about polar bears — it studies the visible symptoms amid animals on display and their artificial habitats by focusing on one specific species. These habitats are designed to satisfy both the spectators (audience) and the dwellers (animals). With their effort to mimic the arctic environment, the uncanny structures combined “nature,” “home” and “stage.” Juxtaposed with man-made backgrounds, the enclosures and their furry protagonists formed visions decorated with contrasting elements — grasslands, plateaus, swimming pools, car tires, fake seals, stone stairs, painted icebergs, yachts, airplanes, and even skyscrapers. Under limited space and resources, there are various issues lurking beneath their surfaces.

As natural habitats are being destroyed, it may be reasonable to keep certain species in controlled environments; however, it remains questionable whether some results reflect their causes. The existence of captive white bears portrays this ambiguity. Promoted as exotic tourist-magnets (mega fauna), the bears stand at the singularity points at which the institutions’ contemporary justifications fall into question — the mission of conservation, research and education seem challenged by the interest of entertainment.

Sheng does not subscribe to the belief that “all captive animal programs are evil” or “zoos should not exist,” because, as he states, “animal issues are complex and intertwined with each other.” In an interview about his work, I read that Sheng wishes to avoid anthropomorphism, that he “would not like to make pictures of ‘sad looking’ animals.” He says, “That is not very scientific.”

“I would like to propose another way of looking at animal issues,” Sheng says. “Because when facing these issues, it is very easy to get emotional and let our preconceptions dominate our judgements. In a lot of cases I would argue that is not what [is] best for the animals in the end. There may be a lot of benefits to discuss things scientifically, and make a balance when making judgements.”

While White Bear focuses on polar bears, the project is more broad, using photographs of one species to explore “captive wild animals on display, the dilemma between its intension and cost.” Sheng says, “It is not about whether animals are suitable for captive programs, but rather about whether some animals are not the ideal species to be kept in captivity. Therefore, [I] focused on one particular species, which I believed stand at the crux of this dilemma. In other words, while some animals may benefit from captive programs and serve conservation, education and research purposes, there are species that seems naturally unsuited for artificial habitats.”

Finally, of their man-made habitats, Sheng asks, “I understand it is difficult to use a real iceberg but what is the point of [not] just paint[ing] one instead? Rationally, these bears are born in captivity, so they have probably never seen a real iceberg or a sea lion. I wonder who are the users of these visual objects, and whether the enclosures are homes or stages?”

At first I was attracted to these really beautiful photos that at the same time made me laugh and broke my heart. After spending the better part of a day reading the artist’s words about the work, I feel like I have an entirely new set of considerations to make when photographing animals and when visiting and thinking about zoos. I’m so grateful to know about this work.

Visit artist site: shengwenlo.com