Beauty and the Beast

Stephen Feeke on Frederico Camara

Someone told me it’s all happening at the zoo.I do believe it, I do believe it’s true.

When I first saw Frederico Câmara’s photographs, I initially did not understand I was lookingat images of zoos. It was with my own sculptural bias at the fore, that I took Câmara’s workfor images of another artist’s installation. Was it Beuys? Or maybe by an Arte Povera artist? Ishould say (in my defence) that my mistake was only momentary, but on reflection, looking atthe same work some three years later, I feel my reading wasn’t entirely erroneous. Notknowing it was an animal enclosure and seeing no creatures anyway, what I saw was objectsdisplayed in stark white spaces with what I took to be great purpose and economy. Thematerials I saw were those of sculpture, like wood and metal, used in combination of form,colour and texture. The overall appearance was so casual that I knew it had in fact beencarefully constructed, with each item precisely placed in relation to each other and to thespace they were in.Câmara is not the first artist to find inspiration at the zoo, though in the past it was usually theanimals that were the attraction. Painters such as Oudry immortalised a menagerie andStubbs painted Queen Charlotte’s zebra, her cheetahs and even a kongouro (sic). Morerecently, it was common practice for students at the Royal College of Art to take the lifedrawing class out of the studio and into Regent’s Park to capture beasts there. Whilst onoccasion one might just sneak into his frame, it’s not the animals that appeal to Frederico atall and in fact, he travels to the world’s zoos assiduously trying to avoid them. Instead, it is theidiosyncrasy of their unnatural environment that inspires him. What he finds in the enclosuresthemselves has all the beauty, horror and pathos of human existence and what we learnthrough his examination of happenings at the zoo, tells us more about us than it does aboutthe animals.In

Man and the Zoo

(1969) by Heini Hediger (a leading Swiss zoologist), a cartoon illustrationshows a man at the zoo staring inquisitively at a llama; a sign on the railings that separatethem, helpfully says ‘LAMA’. In the next frame of the cartoon, the llama is shown looking backat the man aided by a sign saying ‘MENSCH’.

It might be funny to think that the man was theentertaining exhibit in the zoo and not the animal, that their strangeness and exoticism isreciprocated by ours and indeed that we are therefore equally odd species to each other. Inreality there is no such role reversal and we are very much the dominant species. So whilstlooking at a Câmara, the experience of his zoo photographs is very much of being on theoutside and gazing in. In some examples a metal cage keeps the viewer back. Câmaradoesn’t try to avoid the grille or shoot round it, rather he allows it to form a defiantly bold gridright across the foreground, and we are left trying to peep through the bars into the spacebeyond. Even when an animal enclosure is glazed, the flatness and frontality of Câmara’spicture plane creates an impenetrable barrier that prevents us entering further.His is not the familiar recreation of a logical space which we often see in a work of art, whichwe might imagine ourselves occupying via our minds eye. Instead we remain very much inour world, in our own time and space. Of course we are fascinated and compelled to look atwhat is or (more rightly) what is not there. However our role is very much as observers fromour side of the bars and on this side of the picture frame. In addition, the locations Câmaraoften chooses to record are less than inviting in themselves. Often there is somethingdesolate, hostile and uncomfortable about the surroundings he finds, which may look moremedical than zoological. Harsh lighting, tiled or metal surfaces and concrete floors offer coldcomfort to whatever animal is normally housed there. Indeed, it can be sad and shocking tothink any creature could ever survive there. But it is also the very absence of an animal thatcan make Câmara’s work so unsettling; it feels as if something bad may have happened hereand it feels like death.

Simon, P & Garfunkel, A. ‘At the zoo’, from the album

Bookends

. Sundazed (1968).

Reproduced in Blunt, W.

The Ark in the Park

. Tryon Gallery (1976). p.246.

In Câmara’s works, it often feels as if time has been suspended and the atmosphere is so stilland literally lifeless, that it’s as if all the air has been sucked out. Nature abhors a vacuumthough, as does the power of our imagination and so we the viewer start to fill the void. Hencewe look for equivalents for what we know is missing and a concrete tree trunk starts to looklike a crocodile and fake vines appear like snakes. Indeed some of the more elaborateinteriors Câmara photographs appear so vibrant that they themselves might be sentient andalive.Câmara has said that the institutions we create are ‘organic’ and have a kind of life just as wehumans do: ‘in Brazilian Portuguese we even call them “organs”. In their symbolic flesh theyhave the same strengths and weaknesses that are our own. Their tissue is subject tochanges, death and renewal. They are a reflection of our lives.’

If our institutions are a mirror of ourselves, then we might therefore conclude that each generation gets the ones theydeserve. If this is the case, what do zoos say about us? And by focussing on them, what isCâmara saying about us?Today zoos raise emotive issues and have an ambiguous status despite their currentincarnation as centres of research, conservation and preservation. During their surprisinglylong history, they have always been sites of some contention. So whilst there are delightfulstories of Henry I’s polar bear hunting for fish in the Thames, by the 16th-century there werealready concerns being voiced about cramped conditions behind heavy ‘grates’. The wonder and spectacle of the ‘natural’ world was a great attraction and occasionally animals achievedcelebrity –– like Clara the rhino or Jumbo the elephant –– with feeding time being especiallypopular (18th-century visitors to the Tower of London zoo could pay an entry charge or bringa live cat or a dog to feed to the lions).

Câmara is aware of this ambivalence and probably knows this is precisely why they makeinteresting subjects. However he has a documentary style of working and remains neutral,without passing judgement on the rights or wrongs of what zoos do. Instead, he recordswhat he finds there leaving us to respond in whichever way we feel and he utilises the samecalculated approach whether he is photographing a painting store, a derelict library or ananimal enclosure. In fact Câmara talks about his work as reportage,

and it can have a cool,dispassionate edge. Yet conversely, despite this detachment, his work can also possess anextreme beauty. Sontag has noted that ‘photographs create the beautiful’,

echoingBenjamin’s much earlier observation that photography ‘can no longer record a tenement blockor a refuse heap without transfiguring it’.

And Câmara agrees that beauty is a problemfor photography; for him, the impulse to create something beautiful is both instinctive andunavoidable. Hence, when he points his camera he will automatically start constructing themost satisfying image possible: looking for formal qualities of composition and colour, locatingthe best angle, finding overlooked details and reformulating them––of course he also has tosit and wait for long periods waiting for the animals to retreat, so he has the time to think andplan the final work. And by embracing such subjectivities, Câmara can give the ugliest cagethe depth and richness of old master paintings–– those elaborate Dutch still lifes for instance which are at once bountiful and lush depictions of nature and

memento mori

.Before taking up photography, Câmara initially studied drawing and painting at Escola deBelas Artes/Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Brazil), and it was painting that first drewCâmara to a zoo. He had been photographing the natural landscape but found himself unableto find or express anything new, whereas the painted tableaux to be found inside cages or enclosures were intriguing. The diorama, complete with arrangements of model trees, rocksand water, approximate an animal’s natural terrain, which might be a jungle, a snow coveredmountain, a lake or river or a desert as appropriate. It is the majesty of nature presented in amicrocosm, and without animals to distract us the artfulness of the conceit comes to the fore.Who and what are these backdrops for one wonders? Do they make the animal feel more at

Câmara, F. Henry Moore Institute Newsletter, no. 63, (December/January 2005/6).

For a brief history of zoos, see Blunt,

The Ark in the Park

, pp.16-21.

Conversation between the author and Frederico Câmara (27 October 2009).

Sontag, S.

On Photography

. Penguin (1971). p.85.

Benjamin, W. ‘The Author as Producer’. In

Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings

,ivol. 2, pt. 2 (1931-34). Livingstone,R and others (trans.); Jennings, M; Eiland,iH & Smith, G. (eds.). Harvard University Press (2005). p.775.