Shooting Heads is a photographic installation of large digital C-prints of the human head eclipsing the sun. The photographs are in response to the recent mass slaughter of European farm animals suspected of hoof-and-mouth disease.
The tenuous connections between humans and animals are suggested through the abstracted reflections of the pristine and polluted heads, encircled with vines and garbage suspended against the sky. The silhouettes form human and animal portraits overwhelmed by the foreboding relationship we impose on the natural world and its creature inhabitants. Rather than communing and sharing with the animal world around us from which we decend, we perpetuate paradigms of separations, exploitation and eradication. The imagery of human heads transforming into hybrid like species develops from a desire to re-establish a meaningful and respectful bond between ourselves and our fellow animals.
Julie A. McConnell
2001