Animals Are Outside Today
2012
The photographs in this exhibition are from Colleen Plumb’s series Animals Are Outside Today, which examines relationships between humans
and animals, studying how animals are woven through the fabric of culture. Contradictions define our relationships with animals. We love and admire them; we are entertained and fascinated by them; we take our children to watch and learn about them. Animals are embedded within core human history—evident in our stories, rituals and symbols. At the same time, we eat, wear and cage them with seeming indifference, consuming them, and their images, in countless ways.
Henry Beston stated regarding animals in The Outermost House in 1928: “They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.” This work explores underneath this net, and questions if the notion of sacred—and the primal connection to Nature that animals convey and inspire—will survive alongside our evolution.
Colleen Plumb’s work been exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in numerous public and private collections. Her photographs have
been widely published, and her first monograph, Animals Are Outside Today (Radius Books, 2011), was named a 2011 Notable Book by Photo District News. Plumb teaches in the Photography Department at Columbia College Chicago, and lives in Chicago with her husband and two daughters.
and animals, studying how animals are woven through the fabric of culture. Contradictions define our relationships with animals. We love and admire them; we are entertained and fascinated by them; we take our children to watch and learn about them. Animals are embedded within core human history—evident in our stories, rituals and symbols. At the same time, we eat, wear and cage them with seeming indifference, consuming them, and their images, in countless ways.
Henry Beston stated regarding animals in The Outermost House in 1928: “They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.” This work explores underneath this net, and questions if the notion of sacred—and the primal connection to Nature that animals convey and inspire—will survive alongside our evolution.
Colleen Plumb’s work been exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in numerous public and private collections. Her photographs have
been widely published, and her first monograph, Animals Are Outside Today (Radius Books, 2011), was named a 2011 Notable Book by Photo District News. Plumb teaches in the Photography Department at Columbia College Chicago, and lives in Chicago with her husband and two daughters.
