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Julie A. McConnell
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Website http://www.julieamcconnell.com >> This web site features photos of the artist's work.

Personal Statement: Growing up in Manhattan's eclectic environment inspired the collage aesthetics that I bring to photography. In 1999 I began to photograph my own hair sullied with cigarette butts and spent matches and mirrored the images like Rorschach ink blots. They revealed expressive faces - more animal than human animal. Since then I have been pursuing these animal apparitions in human heads of hair in various environments.

My work questions what humans are doing to animals and whether animals can be accorded their own integrity beyond their human-defined use value. Is there an existence for animals beyond their eradication, torture or perpetual biological enslavement as a food source?
Current Work
The photographic series, Missing Bodies, is a visual solicitation of thought and speech about the relationship that human animals have with nonhuman animals. Each image in the series contains a non human animal and a person whose back is turned. Rising above the person there is a blank thought or speech cartoon bubble outlining multiple species. No one species is singled out for consideration.

The image lacks words because of the predominant vacuum that exists in the human animal's concern for non human animal existence. It is speechless because the path leading to a concern for animals is an individual process, not easily directed by hard facts. As if in response to the human subjects’ averted stance, another face emerges in the partially mirrored reflection of the back of their head. The face that appears is an imagined link between the human and the non human. The link exists despite our denial of the connection. It is evidence of our tethered fates.
Short Bio
Julie A. McConnell lives and works in New York City. She is a fine arts photography graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (BFA 1986) and Hunter College (MFA 1994). Since graduating she has participated in solo and group exhibits in New York and throughout the US. Her photomontages have appeared in the New York Times, C magazine, and Photography Quarterly. Additionally her work has been included in the books, A Thousand Hounds by Raymond Merritt and Death in the Studio by Lederer + Priesch.

Union Affiliations/Professional Organizations
Ceres Gallery
View Resume
Artist Location
New York, NY

Type of artist
Other
General Themes
Feminism/Gender Issues, Body Image/Body Size, Violence, Environment, Mass Media/Pop Culture
Keywords
Animal Rights photographer
Last updated on November 10th, 2005

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