Compared to what she goes through with school, this is a piece of cake.”Īmelia, who is 12 years old and in seventh grade, likes the fact she has met a lot of animals during the project. The thing that shakes her world is Latin. But I had to snap my fingers to awaken Amelia. “Our last shot we drove four hours to photograph a two-faced cat,” Ms. Though sometimes she may have other things on her mind.

She says Amelia is always “in the moment” and becoming more andĪmelia has also proven to be intuitive, she said, figuring out ways to interact with the animals: like when she lay on the ground and placed a feed bowl on her stomach before being photographed with an alpaca. She tries to shoot fast, knowing that she has no control over how the interaction will play out in front of her camera. Schwartz, who is represented by ClampArt gallery, has traveled widely to set up Networking through groups and contacts from her previous work – and bartering prints – Ms. “I hope she sees these pictures and knows how much I care about her.” “In case I kicked the bucket, I wanted her to remember what we did together,” Ms. It spurred her to start taking more pictures of Amelia. In the intervening period, her mother and several other relatives died. That’s beginning to worry me.”īut it would not be until a year after that first monkey encounter that the project took off. Everything I liked when I was little, I still like now. “I remember being a 7-year-old and looking though a book that had illustrations of chimps,” said Ms. It kind of reminded her of her own childhood. Work, she looked to do something lighter.ĭuring a visit to a circus, she wound up photographing her daughter with Ricky, a monkey. There were also impassioned opinions about keeping primates in captivity (“There was a lot of politics involved, so I learned to be Switzerland”). And she had also done images of street dogs in Mexico. Starting in the 1980s, she had photographed primates in a stark documentary style. It was not exactly a surprise she would be drawn to photographing animals. I want the animal in the picture to be as important as Amelia. I’m looking for this magical connection that may or may not be there. Schwartz, who lives in New Jersey, where she teaches photography at William Paterson University. “I’m looking for a relationship between Amelia and the animal,” said Ms. At their best, they can capture a fleeting moment between the two, revealing an ease and intimacy that is surprising. That are by turns funny, tender, edgy and warm. Schwartz has photographed all these animals with Amelia over the past few years, compiling a series of color portraits But I had no idea it would be this hard.” “I wasn’t that comfortable being a mom,” she recalled. Robin Schwartz was looking to do something with her young daughter, Amelia.

Steven schwartz camera arts