A fresh look at the laws of nature, in startling, beautiful, and at times unsettling detail.Working with a menagerie of insects and animals she raises in her New York City studio, Catherine Chalmers makes images that ask us to examine the lives we ordinarily overlook. What we find is by turns surprising, humorous, and thought provoking.In the series of photographs that gives the book its title, Chalmers vividly sketches the links between predator and prey, eater and eaten, from plant to insect to amphibian. Against a stark white background, caterpillars eat a tomato, a praying mantis eats a caterpillar, and a frog and a tarantula each eat a praying mantis. Another section, focused on "pinkies" (the pet-trade name for baby mice), shows with chilling clarity that the laws of nature apply equally to mammals as to the so-called "lower" life-forms. A series of photographs of praying mantises mating-during and after which the female devours the male-captures the metaphorical power and strange beauty of this infamous habit. The book includes an essay by the critically acclaimed nature writer Gordon Grice and a provocative interview with Chalmers by Aperture executive editor Michael L. Sand.

Food Chain

Michael L. Sand

Catherine Chalmers

Aperture

Burson's cataloged work can be divided into three distinct phases. Between 1979 and 1991 she created computer-generated images of fantastical faces: composites, aged portraits, and digitally manipulated facial anomalies. From 1991 to 1995 she made photographic portraits of what she calls "special faces," children and adults whose appearances have been altered by disease, nature, or circumstance. From 1996 to the present, she has been engaged in a range of projects that interlace her natural penchant for the fantastical, her paradoxical relationship with science, and an awareness of the spiritual connections between all living things. In each of these bodies of work, Burson has gone against the grain of technological change. Her early work with computers preceded her later 'straight' photography, whereas many photographers have in recent years integrated the computer into their image-making process. Her current production combines these two strategies, with a twist. -Michael L. Sand

Seeing and Believing: The Art of Nancy Burson

Arts & Photography

Nancy Burson

Individual Artists

Twin Palms Publishers

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Books by Michael L. Sand