Words // Staff Juxapoz
This series of images from French artist Charlotte Caron combine photographic portraits with the painted faces of various animals in an attempt to reconcile humanity’s duality as both man and beast, seemingly civilized and beyond the feral forces of nature, yet also irrevocably bound to it and part of it. Our inner beast is lifted to the surface in Caron’s paintings, still partially recognizable as human yet expressing the visceral souls of animals, whose behaviors and proclivities we still share despite our greatest efforts to deny it. Perhaps coming to terms with our animal-selves will help humanity see nature as a part of our deepest identity, its survival intertwined eternally with our own.
