The Nature of Imitation

‘While understanding photography as a craft as well as an art, she pushed against its limitations. A painting or a drawing, unlike a photograph, is not bound to its subject. In the studio, an artist is free to take creativity wherever it leads… For Yola, birds are a metaphor for her photography—for the ability to fly into freedom while remaining, at times, captured or tethered.’

Excerpt from foreword by Elisabeth Biondi

Looking closely at birds in the fields through the materials of colour film and studio props, The Nature of Imitation considers the physical and metaphorical qualities of the landscape. Like natural history drawings, the photographs reimagine traditions of landscape representation from Renaissance tapestries, the early history of photography, and Modernist painting and sculpture. Collaborating with scientists and naturalists in Massachusetts, New York and Costa Rica, Monakhov Stockton gained access to wild birds caught for banding and release, and those captive in labs. Alongside photographs made in woods, orchards, and gardens, the work cultivates a vocabulary of techniques that attend to the process of picture-making and the emotions and ethics of looking at other creatures.

Specifications

Publisher: Schilt Publishing
Designers: Yola Monakhov Stockton and Carolyn Eckert

17 x 21.8cm
104 pages
Hardbound