Anne Berry

Anne Berry is a photographic artist from Atlanta, Georgia. Her photographs have been exhibited and published internationally, and she has received numerous awards, including Critical Mass 2012 and 2013 Top 50. Anne is represented by the Catherine Couturier Gallery in Houston. She attended Sweet Briar College (BA) and the University of Georgia (MA). Currently Anne is working on Behind Glass, a collection of images of primates in captivity and Animalia, photogravures of animals. A limited edition book featuring work from this project is available from North Light Press.

  Project Statement: Animalia 

Animalia is a series of photogravure portraits of animals. Wassily Kandinsky teaches that the artist has the ability to “realize the inner sound of things.” I listen for this sound when I photograph animals. People have lost an essential connection to the land and to animals. I photograph animals to remind the viewer of this bond. I am always close to the animal physically, and I establish a connection with it. Capturing these images requires patience and understanding. The animal/human relationship is the cornerstone of my work, and the magic of it inspires me to photograph animals. 

I have chosen to print these images in the photogravure process. This process evokes a feeling of timelessness and produces portraits that stress the dignity and beauty of the animals:

I hope that by looking at my images the viewer will hear the inner melody of the animal, and the lyrics will ask the viewer to consider the animal’s place in the world, to do as Franz Marc instructs, to “contemplate the soul of the animal to divine its way of sight.“

Anne’s photography of animals “vehemently avoids the high resolution color aesthetic of zoological photography, opting instead for a gaze evocative of early pictorialists, who strived to render the photographic distinctly unscientific and launched the then novel medium of photography into the realm of fine art. Within Berry’s jarringly ghostly and ethereal tones, each subject reveals a soulfulness so often hidden in photographs of animals; their struggle is urgently expressionistic, spiritual, dignified, and human." -- Ellyn Ruddick-Sunstein, The Plight of Primates in Captivity, Beautiful Decay, 02/28/14