2022
Split captures a moment of high-tension stillness, visualizing an animal’s adaptive duality as its presence fractures between awareness and defense under the pressure of human intrusion.
Photographed during a safari encounter, the work examines how wildlife is compelled into heightened visibility through imposed proximity and movement. The forest ceases to function solely as refuge and becomes a disturbed environment, where the animal’s vigilant body bears the imprint of disruption.
The series emerged from the recognition that the human pursuit of peace and connection with nature frequently generates the very disturbance it seeks to escape. Rather than pursuing spectacle, the work observes how forced visibility unsettles natural rhythms and survival instincts. Here, heightened vigilance becomes a visual language of endurance, and stillness signifies readiness rather than tranquility.
By resisting conventional wildlife imagery, Split repositions the human gaze as the primary source of disturbance. It questions the ethics of access, observation, and entitlement within landscapes designated as protected, asking whether conservation can coexist with forms of spectatorship that continually interrupt the lives they claim to preserve.
