Corey Arnold is a photographer and a professional fisherman. I don’t know how being a photographer influences the fishing, but how his fisherman life impacted his photography, well, that’s very clear. In his photo series Human Animals he portrays the complex relationship we have with animals and points at things we often ignore, don’t think of, consider normal. The photos are great especially because there’s something raw and honest in many of them, something uncomfortable and yet true. The big picture is actually made by the puzzle of all these human-animal relation instances he photographed. And there’s a bit of all of us in this big picture.
It’s good to notice something else: that while many photos of animals tap – more or less, intentionally or not – into guilt, this series is not doing that. There’s no framing. And you also cannot deny what you see. At the same time, the conversation is not simplified into a – this is good this is bad – debate, focused on only one issue. In how many of these instances do you recognize yourself?
For more there’s a book you can buy on his website. Actually three books. And here’s an interview with Corey on Feature Shoot.