The Illusion of Orderly Progress
Editorial Reviews Amazon.com Barbara Norfleet's bugs are more human than humans. In this remarkable collection of photographs, Norfleet has posed insects and arachnids in dioramas that profoundly illustrate the failings and foibles of our own species. In his foreword, entomologist E.O. Wilson notes, "The artist means to tell us something about human nature, particularly in its more vainglorious, cowardly, and other foolish manifestations."
Photos of human workers engaged in meaningless toil would make a somewhat overdone point, but Norfleet's carefully posed insects and strange, barren landscapes pull us away from the familiar just enough to make us see things we might have missed. Her gorgeous and rare insects are so peculiar, so engagingly presented that they provoke brand-new reactions to such activities as capital punishment, domestication of other animals, and war. In one photo entitled Little Time for Whimsy, a line of serious beetles works hard at pushing their burdens--Where? Why? And for how long? You may as well ask why some of us voluntarily sit in cubicles eight hours a day. Another diorama (Am I Pretty?) gently mocks vanity as a line of garishly colored tropical beetles competes for the gold star that will presumably bring ultimate satisfaction. Insect society seems to have a lot in common with our own. Besides the thoughtful and clever poses, each photo affords a close look at some of the most amazing creatures you'll ever see. It's a wonderland of entomological ecstasy. --Therese Littleton From Scientific American It is a slender book of stunning photographs, part serious science and part whimsy. Norfleet has posed many colorful insects, most of them dead, in more or less natural settings and photographed them. She presents a five-inch by seven-inch photograph on each right-hand page. The whimsy is in the brief caption on each facing page and often in the related photograph. For example, the caption that also serves as the book's title accompanies a photograph of 13 shining leaf chafer beetles (Chrysina macropus) forming a vertical triangle around a piece of clay in what appears to be almost military precision, but they are in fact circling forever and going nowhere. At the end of the book, Norfleet identifies the insects in each photograph insofar as their identity is known. "There exist between 10 and 30 million insects," she notes, "and only about 1 million have names." Norfleet is founder, director and curator of the photography collection at Harvard University's Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts. She has done herself proud with this, her seventh book. The Illusion of Orderly Progress
The Illusion of Orderly Progress,Barbara Norfleet,Knopf,0375405585,Collections, Catalogs, Exhibitions,Individual Photographer,Individual Photographers And Their Work,Insects,Nature Photography,Norfleet, Barbara P,Photo Essays,Photography,Photography of insects,Photography, Artistic,Pictorial works,Photography / Individual Photographer
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