The Lumiere Center for Photography in Moscow announces a new exhibition “Unnatural Selection” by Tim Flach, the British animal photographer known all over the world for his unusual shots of wild and domestic animals.
He explores the interaction of humans and the environment, rare and endangered species of animals, adapting nature to the needs and tastes of humanity, urging us to think about the fragility of our relationship with the natural world and the need to have a caring attitude towards it.
Many photographs show the animals in their natural habitat, contrasting with those taken in the studio. In moving an animal from its natural environment to territory that is unfamiliar — yet familiar to us — Flach highlights its resemblance to a human.
For the first time, Flach became seriously interested in the animal world while studying at university preparatory courses, when for one of the classes he made a photo report from the London Zoo. Each of his projects, Tim turns into a thoughtful study, asking for help from scientists and specialists in the field of zoology and traveling to different countries of the world in search of rare species of the animal world.
The exhibition presents photographs from projects of different years, each of which the author subsequently designed into a book. Over the first series of “Equus”, devoted to various types of horse family, Flach worked for about seven years. A large album with photographs of the second project Dogs Gods, a portrait gallery of the dog family, was released in 2010. The third album “More than human” in 2012 combines selected works from previous projects and photos of wild animals. In 2017, the book formed the project “Endangered”, dedicated to rare species of the animal world, many of whose representatives are on the verge of extinction and are listed in the Red Book. Flach continues to work on this series today.
“We have never studied the animal world as well as today, but, in fact, we have never been so far from each other as we are now“, Tim Flach notes.
Tim Flach – Unnatural Selection
October 19, 2018 – January 6, 2019
The Lumiere Center for Photography
Moscow, Bolotnaya emb., 3/1
