2025 SPE Annual Conference: Adaptations
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print this pageImagemaker: Emma Kisiel
Saturday, September 22 - 1:30PM to 2:00PM
I am a photography artist and author of the blog and online artist index, Muybridge's Horse. Both in my artwork and on my blog, I explore the ways in which we as humans experience and interact with nature and animals. I use photography to document and ponder my emotional and physical closeness to animals, both living and dead; the significance and future of taxidermy in museums of natural history; and the 21st century culture of places where visitors can experience captive and preserved animals. Often, my images question the authenticity of the moments we share with animals, as well as our comfort with our own mortality.
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I am passionate about the preciousness of animals and the importance of a sincere and genuine relationship with them. As a supporter of other artists' explorations of the connection between humans and animals/nature, I feature their work on Muybridge's Horse. The site serves as both a regularly updated blog, showcasing established and emerging artists in photography and other media, and a comprehensive catalog of animal/nature-concerned artists' work. It contains a detailed search function, a dated archive of nearly 500 posts, and an alphabetical index of featured artists – all image-based.
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In my proposed talk, I would present Muybridge's Horse as a resource for artists, students, and hobbyists, as well as focus on one of my recent bodies of work, Real Enough. The artist statement for this project is below.
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I wonder if the relationship we as humans share with animals and nature is genuine, authentic, real enough. For four years beginning in 2013, I visited natural history museums, zoos, and other places where visitors can experience captive and preserved animals in over half the states across the US while thinking about whether our interactions with animals and nature are sincere and substantial or artificial and contrived.
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As humans in a fast-paced, overwhelmingly digital existence, we seek a connection with animals and the natural world in order to feel whole. So many of our interactions feel limited, as we are always at a bit of a distance from our non-human animal counterparts and the physicality of our planet. The visitor's experience of animals and nature at zoos, museums, and other like places is curated, controlled, dulled down or played up. My photographs highlight the divide between humans and "the wild," and the various ways in which the wild is experienced today.
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speaker
Emma Kisiel
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