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Nine
Francois explains more about her animal series:
"In
this sense, animals are vital building blocks for the development
of language.
"I
was thinking about children's alphabet blocks and wanted to create
animal photographs that would suggest the clear, broad markings
of letters or numbers.
"When
strung together and seen from a distance, these images transform
into the lyrical curves and sweeps of an exaggerated text - akin
to a child's first sentence written on a large Chieftain tablet.
"I
also wanted to produce images that were fun and silly, that call
to mind the quirky and delightfully skewered perspective of children.
This project started soon after I had left graduate school.
"I
developed a habit of stalking neighbourhood pets with a plastic
camera and one of those old-time flash bulbs that exploded like
blue lightning when I tripped the shutter.
"The
resulting pictures were ridiculous - a blur of action, a hot-spot
where the bulb missed the subject, a mess of fur and eyeballs exiting
the scene - rapidly! It was an absurd obsession. Nevertheless,
I did this for a while.
"Then
one day, a little girl pointed me out to her mom and whispered emphatically,
There Mom! There she is!
"Realising
that I had cultivated a reputation as the neighbourhood nut, I decided
to augment my strange little passion into a bona fide photo project.
"I
began researching habitats where I could photograph animals up close
with a wide-angle lens to abstract their forms against a blown out
sky.
"I
started out small with goats, pigs, and chickens, eventually moving
on to bigger animals such as elephants, tigers, and bears.
"Getting
close had its problems. Sometimes it meant standing in the hot Texas
sun for hours waiting for a no-show camel.
"At
other times, it meant running like hell from a charging elephant.
"I've
often thought the real project should have been a video of the shenanigans
behind the actual capturing of these images."
More
details on Nine and other photographers can be found on the festival’s
website at
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