Patrick James
Irei / Following
- PhotographerPatrick James
- CreditProject supported by Culture and Animals Foundation
Onnis Luque The modern dichotomy between culture and Nature imposed an ideology that transformed everything other-than-human and, at times, even certain human groups, into commodities and marketable materia prima. Animals came to be understood as products of mass production, serving the food industry and the market. Patrick’s gaze, in turn, returns us to the animals as beings with whom we cohabit territories in a symbiotic relationship.
Irei / Following
In Irei / Following (2021–), Patrick James turns his camera towards a simple encounter: an animal looking back at us. The series brings together portraits of M, Mose, Valentino, Pamela, Ferdinand, Xati and Ulises, photographed in the Val Taleggio in Italy and at Granjita TyH and Santuario Eli, two animal sanctuaries in Mexico. Influenced by Jacques Derrida’s The Animal Therefore I Am, the work asks what we can learn from the gaze of an animal, and how we see the animals looking back at us.
A Quiet Portrait
James spends several days or weeks with each individual, photographing them in their own surroundings and following their rhythm, space and behaviour. This slow approach gives the animals time to become familiar with the photographer and allows their individual personalities to come through. In the changing expression of M, for example, we see cautious curiosity, a growing sense of trust and other small signs of her character. James describes the series as a form of “quiet” portraiture, where the focus is on the individual rather than on the photographer.
Seeing Animals Differently
Portraiture has traditionally been used to explore human identity and personality. In this series, James uses the same approach with animals, while deliberately avoiding humanising or exoticising them. Instead, the photographs ask us to look more closely at the animals as individuals and to question the way we usually understand them. What might we notice if we move beyond the human ways of communicating and interpreting behaviour that we are used to?
Rethinking Our Relationship
Born in Mexico City in 1983, James is a visual artist and photographer whose work explores territory, ecology and human relationships with other species. His practice looks at what he calls the “Animal Issue”, the political, ethical and philosophical questions surrounding how humans relate to other animals. Drawing from fields including anthropology, animal studies, ethology and philosophy, he examines the ways humans have understood, controlled and represented the non-human world. In Irei / Following, these questions become personal through a series of close encounters, suggesting another way of seeing and living alongside other species.
Thanks to
Granjita TyH, animal sanctuary
Santuario Eli, animal sanctuary
NAHR
