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The Nature of the Beast
Alfons Alt
This is an extraordinary collection of ‘photographs’ of animals by German photographer Alfons Alt, this year’s winner of the European Publishers Award for Photography. Whilst the work is reminiscent of a medieval bestiary it is inescapably contemporary in its visual approach and content. Alt’s way of working is highly unusual – each animal is photographed as if they were having their portrait taken. These are ‘individuals’ not examples of a species. The photographs seem almost to be portrait paintings, an effect achieved by using one of the very early photographic printing techniques – Résino-pigmentype – a pigmentary, non-silver process based on the capacity of gelatine to harden in contact with the sun. This allows him to manipulate the colouration of the images so that each becomes a unique, one-off ‘picture.
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