s t o r y

VIMOTO, Silverback Gorilla, male, born 11. March 1995.
Current residence: Zoo of Wuppertal, Germany

EVELYN, Gorilla, female, date of birth unknown.
Current residence: Los Angeles Zoo, USA

JERRARD, Chimpanzee, male, born 20. February 1990.
Current residence: Los Angeles Zoo, USA

PANDORA, Chimpanzee, female (mother of Jerrard), born 5. March 1967.
Current residence: Los Angeles Zoo, USA

All other Primates photographed in various locations throughout the world.

These creatures fascinate me as long as I can think about.
They are magnificent.
They are imprisoned in zoos around the world.
They are critically endangered.
And, I’ve been photographing them for many years.

I know the names of Vimoto, Evelyn, Jerrard and Pandora, when they were born and where they live. However, the identities of the others are lost for now, along with some of my archive that lived on now-broken hard drives. I feel very sad that they must live in zoos. I know that Evelyn for example has escaped several times.

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This became a “project” by accident. I was searching Etsy for something “vintage” when I noticed an image of convex glass frames that had been rescued from old antique clocks. Intrigued, I ordered one to see what it looked like. A week later it arrived. As soon as I opened the box and saw the distressed old frame and glass, I knew immediately what to do.

I printed one of my favorite primate portraits of Vimoto on extreme metallic paper, framed it behind the convex glass, and then mounted it on reclaimed redwood that I’d collected years ago during a road trip up the California coast. The wood has clam holes in it and was soaking for decades in the Pacific Ocean.

As soon as I finished the first piece I knew that I wanted to create a series using my primate portraits. I bought all the clocks the seller had left. Thirty clock faces and glass frames arrived one week later. Many still had the original faces and metal numbers on them.

This project was a labor of love, a recomposition of dying and decaying elements:

I hand milled, sanded and cut the reclaimed redwood and restored its finish.
I dissembled each vintage clock face, cleaned and trimmed the metal frames and attached them to the redwood.
I scrubbed the convex glass which was covered in decades of filth and grime.
I repurposed the numbers from the clock faces and attached them to each finished piece.

Then I “freed” the primates from their zoos and relocated them in their dream environments – preserving them under glass and inside of images of rainforests and landscapes that I photographed during my travels and are more like their natural habitats.

Now they live under vintage convex clock glass, “CAPTURED IN TIME.”

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About my distinguished subjects:

Gorillas: are critically endangered
· Average live span in the wild: 35 years
· Size: standing height: 4 – 6 feet
· Weight: 300 – 485 pounds

Chimpanzees: are endangered (Population decreasing)
· Average live span in the wild: 45 years
· Size: 4 – 5.5 feet
· Weight: 70 – 130 pound