Artist Statement
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.
Process Statement
Photographs are 20"x24" and 30"x40" Lambda Prints from a Mamiya 7 and most recently a Canon 5D Mark III cameras.
Robin Schwartz's earned a Master of Fine Arts in Photography from Pratt Institute and her photographs are held in several museum collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The 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 in Various Photographs, an installation curated by Barber for the New York Photo Festival and 100 Portraits—100 Photographers, a digital exhibition of current portraiture.
Amelia Series photographs were published 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. She presented the Amelia Series at The National Geographic Magazine’s Annual Photography Seminar in January 2012 in Washington D.C. She will give a Master Talk at LOOK3, The Charlottesville Photography Festival in June.
Portfolios can be viewed at www.RobinSchwartz.net and The ClampArt Gallery, NYC
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