Above Untitled, from The Animals. (©Giacomo Brunelli/Courtesy of the photographer).

Italian born Giacomo Brunelli is a photographer of animals, but he is not a ‘wildlife photographer;’ instead the animals he portrays in his haunting black and white photographs are those domesticated creatures whose lives are intertwined with that of a human population, and of his own childhood memories — dogs, horses, pigeons and cats — that he would encounter during the idyllic days of play on his family farm. And unlike the ‘wildlife photographer’ his dramatic imagery is marked by a visual language which appears more akin to that of the photojournalist, than any form of natural history photography. 

‘In his seminal 1980 essay Why Look at Animals?, John Berger describes a dual but not in any way contradictory human-animal relationship,’ writes Alison Nordström, Curator of Photographs at George Eastman House, in the foreword to Brunelli’s 2008 monograph, The Animals (Dewi Lewis Publishing), ‘“They belonged there and here. Likewise they were mortal and immortal. They were subjected and worshipped, bred and sacrificed.” He asserts that the physical and temporal removal of animals from most of our lives has come with the rise of capitalism, the spread of industrialisation and the end of peasantry, but that the power of animals as metaphor, mystery and elemental spirit remains. For Berger, animals are the quintessential Other, and we look at them to define and discover ourselves.’ It is this relationship that we experience in the The Animals; a series that Brunelli began in 2005. 

Above Untitled, from The Animals. (©Giacomo Brunelli/Courtesy of the photographer).

Describing himself as an animal-focused street photographer, Brunelli says, ‘Once I see an animal that I want to photograph, I try to ignore it then I run after it which usually gains a response; sometimes I just stare at it and see what happens,’ continuing, ‘Their reactions are different, sometimes they are curious about the camera and sometimes they get scared about the noise of the shutter. When I am dealing with dead animals I pick them up from the ground and place them where I think the setting works. In this case my interaction with the animal is a way to give purpose to something that it no longer has.’

Like a child, who pushes his young face into that of the family dog or cat — Brunelli who works with a 1960s Japanese made Miranda Sensomat camera, which gives his prints the distinctive rounded frames — pushes his lens to its closest point of focus, ‘almost touching the subject and forcing flight or fight from the animal, which is when I then record its reaction,’ he remarks. A dog, its eyes wide and bright and its jaw open revealing its ferocious white teeth rushes toward the camera, its aggressive intent physically palpable in Brunelli’s image; in another, altogether gentler photograph, a black feline leaps gracefully from a branch, captured in mid-flight its taught body is silhouetted against the urban landscape; whilst in another of his pictures a peacock walks nonchalantly through the photographic frame, its majestic grace again silhouetted against the grounds of a formal garden or park — and like so many of Brunelli’s photographs, its visual power is achieved through selective composition, that reveals only a small and suggestive part of the animal, in this case, it elegant head and neck, and the distinctive and unmistakable crown like crest.

Above Untitled, from The Animals. (©Giacomo Brunelli/Courtesy of the photographer).

His photographic prints, are says Nordström ‘intimate and contemplative, set in a distinctive universe altogether separate from the epic oversized colour work so prevalent today. They are secret and magical, with the power and intensity of totem, fetish, myth. They are quiet little stories that we tell ourselves because we have always known them. They fit our hands.’ And in taking his photographs not from a human perspective, but from that of the animals he depicts; Brunelli succeeds in developing an immersive quality in his images that pulls the viewer in, allowing them to enter the world of the animals he portrays. 

Brunelli’s ‘images are straightforward but not uncomplicated and, taken together, they demonstrate the magical ability of the photograph both to trace and transform what we see,’ writes Nordström, ‘They show us what something looks like, asserting unquestionably that this is a horse’s eye, a dog’s neck, or the stance of a swan, but they also transcend this factual specificity to tap into something huge, persistent and ineffable. The success of these pictures is not in the information they provide, though the artist’s visual delight in such information may be the source of his strength and consistency. These pictures work because they take us past information to emotion, both the artist’s and our own, and perhaps past emotion to something else that embodies both the fascination and the fear of being part of the world we inhabit.’

Animals is at Tarquinia Galerie, Trouville Sur Mer, France, until the 31 March 2012. The Animals was published by Dewi Lewis Publishing in 2008.