About myself: I was born in Italy 69 years ago, and I have been a photographer since the age of twenty. I have lived in a various countries and tried several kinds of photography, from photo-journalism to fashion, portrait and landscape. During the last six years, I've experimented with a computer.

About this project: the images shown here are part of a body of about two hundred. Sixty-four of these have been exhibited at the Centre National de la Photographie, Paris, France, in December 1994, and published as a book by Actes Sud, Arles, France. It took me about two years to complete the work.

The idea behind these images: our main sight organ is not the eye but the brain. That's why a camera, which is a physical imitation of the eye, shows only a fraction of what we see (and much that we don't see). The computer, which is a physical imitation of the brain, could create a much better equivalent of our perceptions.

For instance: when Grégoire, my 8-year old grandson, got back the pictures he took at the zoo, he was disappointed to see all those iron bars and all that concrete surrounding the animals: what his mind perceived and retained may be much closer to what is shown in this Bestiary.

In other words: it's the camera that has taught us to see photographically. Other humans, of other civilizations, have seen more with the eyes of their mind (think of medieval painting or of aztec sculpture!). Computer images will probably teach us a different way of seing (though I would hate to see the world the way it's seen by some computer artists...)

About technique: all the photographs used in these compositions were taken by myself, with a Nikon camera and reversible color film. I used a Nikon scanner, a Macintosh computer, a Kodak XL thermal printer. The program was Adobe Photoshop 2. The animals were photographed in various zoos, the landscapes are from my files.

Frank Horvat

 

Frank Horvat can be reached at: frank.horvat@wanadoo.fr