In 1864 a German zoologist Dr Alfred Edmund Brehm published the first ‘volume’ of his famous encyclopedia ‘Brehms Tierleben’ (‘Life of Animals’). The second edition of his work was richly illustrated by Gustav Mutzel and was published from 1876 to 1879. The encyclopedia consisted of 10 volumes.
In his books Brehm paid a lot of attention to the description of animals’ psychology. Dr Brehm wrote about animals’ characters in terms, which we usually use describing a human being. Yet the only animal Brehm missed in his book was a human creature. I decided to ‘right the injustice’ and continue Brehm’s research. Using the text from the famous encyclopedia I tried to create a story of a human being’s character.
The original project consists of 12 images and tells a story about four characters, four different ways of life, different social classes, different attitude to the world, and four of the major archetypical characters that can be easily met nowadays.
Through the ages every ‘animal/character’ became to some extent a hostage of a stereotype, and every one of them is trying to break through those artificial boundaries.
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