Eastman House photography exhibition asks Why Look at Animals?

On view Sept. 23 through Jan. 7, major exhibition features classic and contemporary images as well as snapshots from the community

"Everywhere animals offered explanations, or more precisely, lent their name or character to a quality, which, like all qualities, was, in its essence, mysterious" –John Berger, from the 1980 essay "Why Look at Animals ?"

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film presents a major exhibition of historical and contemporary photography that surveys the various ways animals have been depicted photographically for the last century and a half. Why Look at Animals? will be on view at Eastman House Sept. 23, 2006 through Jan. 7, 2007, at which time it will embark upon an international tour. The more than 200 photographs have been drawn from the George Eastman House archive and from studios of contemporary artists around the world. Featured are classic images by artists such as Edward Steichen, Eadweard Muybridge, Walker Evans, Edward Weston, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, as well as work by contemporary artists including John Divola, Harri Kallio, Samantha Bass, and Rebecca Norris Webb.

Why Look at Animals? showcases a selection of photographs from 1852 to the present that together explore the complex and multi–faceted relationships between humans and animals and the ways we see them. Hanging near the professional images of the formal exhibition will be a display of hundreds of snapshots featuring images of pets and other animals submitted by the community.

During the run of the exhibition, Eastman House galleries will be transformed into the zoo, the jungle, the farm, the family hearth, the laboratory, and every other site of human engagement with the rest of the animal kingdom. As philosopher and art historian John Berger famously considered in the seminal 1980 essay from which this exhibition takes its title, we look at animals because their presence allows us to tell ourselves who we are. They are both like and unlike us, and it is by what we do and do not share that we define ourselves as human. As these photographs show, animals inhabit most spheres of our lives and in many ways, some with the power of mystery, and others with the different but no less meaningful power of the familiar. We look at — and photograph — animals to register and elucidate ourselves.

"The vast collections of photographs at George Eastman House include thousands of images of animals. Ranging from art to commerce to science to the deeply sentimental, they demonstrate the many ways in which animals are part of our lives and, also, the many ways that photographs can function," said Dr. Alison Nordström, Eastman House's curator of photographs and leader of the curatorial team that developed the exhibition. "Also featured will be photographs by contemporary artists of diverse styles and approaches who use images of animals to comment on everything from notions of beauty to the human condition."

The featured Eastman House photographs include such treasures as the Comte de Montizon's 1852 salted paper print of the hippopotamus at the Regent's Park Zoo; selections from Edweard Muybridge's "Animal Locomotion" (1887); as well as work by 20th-century masters Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau, Eliot Porter, and Edward Weston, and a variety of historical vernacular images of beloved dogs, champion cows and the like. Also featured will be recently acquired work by Henry Horenstein, Jules Greenberg, and William Wegman. The Motion Picture Department will be represented by a selection of early animated cartoons of anthropomorphized animals, including Felix the Cat, and the Technology Department will display Carl Akeley's famed motion picture camera developed by the naturalist for photographic safaris in Africa.

Additional contemporary work includes selections from Barbara Norfleet's "Manscape With Beasts," Rebecca Norris Webb's "The Glass Between Us," and John Divola's "Dogs Chasing My Car in the Desert." Rochester-based artist Forest McMullin will offer his transcendent and luminous meditations on the beauty of roadkill, and Harri Kallio, the young Finnish recipient of last year's European Book Prize, presents an installation based on five years of research on the now-extinct dodo, undertaken in several natural history museums and in Mauritius, the birds' habitat when alive. The shocking yet formally masterful treatments of slaughterhouses by recent Yale graduate Samantha Bass embody the tensions of our complex relationships to animals we both love and consume. And Frank Noelker's moving portrait studies of aged chimpanzees – "retired" from lives in science or show business – adds a somber note to Toshie Takeuchi's anime-like construction of a fantasy world of space ships and animal costumes, while Chip Simons's anthropomorphic giant bunnies are both humorous and surreal.

"A theme as broad as this one offers numerous opportunities to consider how we use photographs to connect to the world," Nordström said. "It offers our public fresh and compelling slices of both our historical holdings and the world of contemporary art that manifest the humor, horror and delight with which we address our environment and fellow creatures."

Why Look at Animals? is organized by George Eastman House. The exhibition is made possible by New York State Council on the Humanities and Dominion.

How to Submit Snapshots

Man's best friends will pounce onto the gallery walls of George Eastman House, as the community is invited to submit photographs of pets and other animals for a special display accompanying the formal exhibition of Why Look at Animals?

Photographs sought from the community can fall into any of the following five categories:
1) People who look like their pets
2) Amusing pictures of pets
3) Animals in costume
4) People dressed like animals
5) Dear departed pets for a memorial section

Photographs can be submitted electronically online or in hard copy format. Details for submission can be found online at www.eastmanhouse.org (click on "Submit Pet Photo") or at the Eastman House admissions desk during regular business hours Tuesday through Sunday. Please note images cannot be returned. You may also submit in person at the Eastman House admissions desk, where forms are available.

Exhibition Programs

Exhibition Opening
The public is invited to attend the opening reception for the Why Look at Animals? exhibition on Friday, Sept. 29. Those in attendance are invited to dress as an animal. The evening begins at 6:30 p.m. with opening remarks in the Dryden Theatre by Dr. Alison Nordström, curator of photographs. A reception and exhibition viewing will follow. Artists featured in the exhibition will be present to sign books. Those in attendance are invited to come dressed as an animal. Admission is $10 per person. For more information, please call (585) 271-3361 ext. 434.

Artist Panel Discussion
Artists from Why Look at Animals? will take part in a panel discussion at 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 30 in the Potter Peristyle at George Eastman House. Featured in person will be photographers Harri Kallio, Rebecca Norris Webb, Forest McMullin, and Frank Noelker. The public is invited. The event is included with museum admission. (Members of the Rochester Collectors' Circle will begin the afternoon with a lunch and viewing of artist portfolios; to inquire about joining the Rochester Collectors' Cicrle, please call (585) 271-3361 ext. 384.)

Film Series
The Dryden Theatre at George Eastman House will host a film series in conjunction with Why Look at Animals?, framing human relationships with animals between a feel-good screening of Babe: Pig in the City (1998) at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 25 and a chilling examination of how food is brought to our tables in Our Daily Bread (2005) at 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 27. The Dryden will screen The Case of the Grinning Cat (2004) at 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 5, preceded by a 17-minute program of short films: The Bestiary: Short Films About Animals by Chris Marker: Cat Listening to Music; An Owl is an Owl is an Owl; Zoo Piece; Bullfight in Okinawa; and Slon Tango. Admission to the Dryden Theatre is $6; $5 students; $4 members.

For more information about the exhibition or related programs, please visit www.eastmanhouse.org or call (585) 271-3361. Admission to George Eastman House is $8 for adults; $6 for senior citizens (60 and older); $5 for students; $3 for children (5 to 12); and free for children 4 and under and museum members.

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