Synopsis
Charlotte Cory's "Visitors" are truly creatures of fantasy and fascination - each so delicately posed that we think "can that be real?" A noble tiger in full military regalia, a dejected donkey slumped in a chair in a sparse studio setting, and a haughty kangaroo holding a cricket bat and gazing out at us dismissively. What kind of extraordinary creatures are these? Cory's images rework cartes de visite, the photographic visiting cards that were a Victorian craze. Many millions were produced and are now so commonly discarded in junk shops that they are almost worthless.Can there be anything more poignant than a person got up in their best bib and tucker, preserved for a posterity that is no longer interested? Yet there is something assuredly sadder than discarded photographs of forgotten faces and family pets: all those stuffed animals in museums, shot long ago not on glass plates but with guns, their very bodies preserved for posterity to gawk at. Where did this moth-eaten lion sniff his last antelope? How many of us have stood with our noses pressed to the glass eyeing these captured creatures?
"The Visitors" is a remarkable book that draws us into an imagined world of immense power and originality.
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