ZOO (2017)
The scientific urge to capture life led to the invention of photography as well as the establishment of zoos in Europe’s major cities. By photographing the animals and the zoos with an antique, wooden plate camera from 1880, Annemarie van Buuren shows the anachronistic character of this creation. Without what she refers to as the ‘double fetish’ of warm colours and excessive details, the raw reality of these animals’ lives becomes visible: captured behind the bars of dated, nineteenth century institutions, reduced to fairground attractions and cut off from the wilderness where they belong.
