Food Chain: Encounters between Mates, Predators, and Prey (aka Foodchain)

Chalmers, Catherine; Grice, Gordon

ISBN 10: 0893818852 / ISBN 13: 9780893818852

Published by Aperture Foundation, New York, 2000

About this Item

2000 First Edition, First Printing with full printing number line. FINE in FINE price intact dust jacket. A crisp, clean, totally unmarked copy, firmly bound in bright coral colored hardcover, title gilt stamped on spine. Boards and spine straight. Unclipped jacket is clean and complete, no tears, chips or creases. Incredible close-up color photography by Catherine Chalmers displays step-by-step process of little creature devouring their prey. The book is edited by Michael Sand and includes his interview with Chalmers. 5-page introductory essay, "Eaten" by Gordon Grice. 11-1/2 x 7-3/4"; 128 pages.

Seller Inventory # 005545

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Food Chain: Encounters between Mates, Predators, and Prey (aka Foodchain)
• Publisher: Aperture Foundation, New York
• Publication Date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0893818852
• ISBN 13: 9780893818852
• Binding: Hard Cover
• Illustrator: Chalmers, Catherine (Photographer)
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Photography
  • Natural History & Science

About this title

Synopsis

A fresh look at the laws of nature, in startling, beautiful, and at times unsettling detail.

Working with a menagerie of insects and animals she raises in her New York City studio, Catherine Chalmers makes images that ask us to examine the lives we ordinarily overlook. What we find is by turns surprising, humorous, and thought
provoking.

In the series of photographs that gives the book its title, Chalmers vividly sketches the links between predator and prey, eater and eaten, from plant to insect to amphibian. Against a stark white background, caterpillars eat a tomato, a praying mantis eats a caterpillar, and a frog and a tarantula each eat a praying mantis. Another section, focused on "pinkies" (the pet-trade name for baby mice), shows with chilling clarity that the laws of nature apply equally to mammals as to the so-called "lower" life-forms. A series of photographs of praying mantises mating-during and after which the female devours the male-captures the metaphorical power and strange beauty of this infamous habit. The book includes an essay by the critically acclaimed nature writer Gordon Grice and a provocative interview with Chalmers by Aperture executive editor Michael L. Sand.

About the Author

Catherine Chalmers has had solo exhibitions of her work at P.S. 1 in New York City and at the Center on Contemporary Art in Seattle. Her images have appeared in Harper's, Blind Spot, Aperture, and elsewhere. She lives in New York City.