Anne Berry. Letting the Animals Speak for Themselves

by Richard Ediger 



Spotlight on Anne Berry.
© Richard Ediger 2010



Look at an Anne Berry photograph. It’s difficult to walk away without feeling that there is something important going on behind the image. Consider her Baboon in Window photograph that is mounted in the Atrium of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport as part of the Atlanta Photography Group Airport Show exhibit. Yes, it’s beautiful and maybe even haunting. But there is something else there – something deeper that begs attention.



Baboon in Window.
© Anne Berry 2009


Finally, letting the image speak for itself, you realize that what is being communicated here is empathy. There is a connection between the viewer and the baboon that goes beyond seeing. It is almost a shared experience. We may not know what the animal in the window is thinking, but we seem to know on some level what it is feeling. This theme of empathy runs through many of Anne’s animal photographs and is core to her personal philosophy.

Anne and I spent a picture-perfect October morning together walking the bamboo-lined walkways of Zoo Atlanta with our cameras, talking about animals and her depiction of them in her photographic art. Zoo Atlanta takes Anne back to her childhood when her mother took her there almost weekly. There she learned to know the animals and their keepers. Befriending the zookeepers, Anne regularly fed the baby tigers and began to learn the beauty of sharing the planet with our animal companions.

Baby tigers led to horses. Anne was a competitive equestrian at an early age and her study and love of horses grew through college and into a master’s degree in horse science and literature at the University of Georgia. Extensive studies of both photography and art were additional key aspects of her academic training.

A lifetime of caring about animals has given Anne a strong sense of animal conservation. She says, “Conservation of species is a vital component of biodiversity, which is vital for the survival of our planet.” Her photographic vision, in many ways, is a direct outcome of her personal emphasis of animal conservation. You can tell it in her images. Go to her website, www.anneberrystudio.com, and review her portfolios. You are likely to sense much of the same empathy that Anne has for her subjects. Anne points out that sharing empathy with the animals we experience around us enriches our own lives, for “the animals ask questions for which there are no easy answers, but silently they are asking us to consider them.”

For Anne though, words speak as loudly as pictures. Travel to her blog, www.anneberrymenagerie.com, and experience the stories behind the images. Learn how a photograph of a dog with a bandage can “ …speak the language of emotions, to touch to the world of metaphor, dreams, and mystery.” Discover why Anne’s images have a square format. Find out who said “Art is something which, although produced by human hands, is not created by these hands alone, but something which wells up from a deeper source in our souls.” For Anne, words and images go side-by-side. She states that her blog is a “vehicle for writing about an image when I have something to say that helps me clarify what I think about my work.”

The practice of animal conservation, to Anne, means more that just making beautiful photographs. Last year she worked with the Kangaroo Conservation Center in Dawsonville Georgia to capture images of kangaroos in their quiet moments. She then used the images to illustrate Rudyard Kipling’s “The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo” in a book. Proceeds of the sale of the book go directly to the Kangaroo Conservation Center, further illustrating Anne’s commitment to animal welfare.

Along with understanding the circumstance of animals, sometimes misunderstanding by others can also occur. Take her photography of a kangaroo simply enjoying the sun. Someone once asked “Is that kangaroo dead?” As if we didn’t already know it, a photograph is always an interpretation that overlays the viewer’s own prejudices into the image.

Sunbath.
© Anne Berry 2009

At the end of October she and Will, her husband, find themselves traveling from their home in Newnan to South Africa. Anne intends to collaborate with both the Baboon Matters Foundation in Cape Town and the Center for Animal Rehabilitation in Phalaborwa (beside “the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River”; do you know your Kipling?) to create a book of images that will support their work in baboon conservation.

While Anne is mostly about animals, she says that there is another side to her wanderings. A family tradition started by her grandmother often puts her in cemeteries, appreciating the soulful statuary and the meanings behind them. Anne says, “Cemeteries are like museums without all the people.” This practice of hers can occasionally lead to interesting experiences. Not once, but twice, she and her husband have been locked in cemeteries in foreign countries after closing time. Sometimes following a passion has its challenges.

Portfolio reviews also have their moments. In a recent event, one image of three aligned swans in particular drew strong comments from nearly all of the reviewers. The trouble is, half of them loved it and half hated it. Go figure.

Given the artistic appeal of Anne’s animals, it is not surprising that acknowledgement has come her way. The Airport Show is only the most recent. She’s been in the Atlanta Photography Group’s Anne Cone-Skelton Selects and In Your Dreams exhibitions, Slow Exposures 2010, Mason Murer’s Atlanta Showcase, and she took first place in the 2009 Atlanta Flower Show. Her work has also received a Julia Margaret Cameron 2009 award and has been published, among others, in Silvershotz Magazine (Vol 3, Ed 6), SHOTS (#104 and #108) and the Photo District News Best Friends competition.

So, you may agree with me that there is more to an Anne Berry photograph than meets the eye. They, as she says, sound an inner note that the viewer's emotion will hear.

Text copyright Richard Ediger 2010