Guest Speaker: Tim Flach

Tim Flach is a highly successful photographer and an example of how to harness the synergies between a singular personal practice and a commercial career.  Over the past decade, his work has increasingly focused on animals, ranging widely across species but united by a distinctive style that is derived from his concerns with anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism. His interests lie in the way humans shape animals, and shape their meaning. Whether genetically, as with the featherless chicken, or with the symbolism that gives a special significance to a dove but dismisses a London pigeon as a flying rat. His images aim to promote discussion and encourage debate.

His work looks into how one emotionally engages with an image, even when we don't know what we are looking at. How an image can be interpreted as something completely different from what it is all because of its composition and angle. The many photographs of animals he presented to us were amazing. It's incredible how much he has seen - it's inspiring!

He spoke about his book, Endangered which is going out next week. The book needed to connect with people and communicate what he was trying to say through the animals in his images. He wanted to create personality and encourage a sense of connection with the animals.

With the images present within the book he plans to make more people aware of these endangered animals and remind them of their beauty. He knew he needed to capture cuteness and vulnerability in order to grasp the attention of his audience. There is this element of documentary in his project because it becomes quite personal to him where he has travelled around in order to get those images. He also used metaphors within his work when he photographed a small section of the tree which resembled something to him as part of the project. I believe it may resembled a map of a country? I'm not quite sure though. The use of metaphor will help discuss habitat and location.

Sometimes when he would be shooting an animal within a studio he would be given a matter of 5 minutes. Therefore he would have to practise with a teddy that was the same as the animal he was about to shoot. 

Tim went on explaining how art is a great platform to work with when collaborating with the natural world, and should do it more often. Photographs can be powerful and say so much but show so little within the content.