In ‘Cowspines,’ the Bony Topographies of Bovine Backs Appear Like Rugged Landscapes



All photos © Kate Kirkwood, shared with permission

Cragged, gaunt topographies bisect the misleading landscapes by Kate Kirkwood, a British photographer whose work is deeply rooted within the countryside of the Lake District the place she’s lived for the final 23 years. There, beneath the clear, blue skies or amid the haze of dense fog, Kirkwood frames what seems to be huge, barren terrains that with additional examination, are revealed to be fragmented pictures of the animals wandering the fields fairly than the vistas themselves.

Taken through the summer season months, the pictures are a part of her ongoing Cowspines collection, a set of photos that amplify the cattle’s bony buildings and mushy hides lined with small tufts of hair. The pictures are the results of bonding with the animals, Kirkwood tells Colossal, that concerned “getting as shut as they’d let me, feeling their heat, swooning from their intense cow perfume,” she says. “Their nuzzling and milkiness was intoxicating, after which, to note how the sway and the curve of their spines, their hips, and shoulders, harmonised with the rocks, hills, clouds, fields, and stone partitions behind them was a really thrilling realisation.”

Now compiled in a volume revealed by Ten O’Clock Books, the pictures current a distorted, but celebratory perspective of the animals and their relationship to their setting. Kirkwood elaborates in an interview:

In the identical method that the backs of the dwelling cows in my images grow to be a part of the panorama, so too, maybe, in a beautiful reversal, the panorama, the hills, the shapes, the climate, grow to be dwelling entities, their assimilation of the warm-blooded creatures within the foreground imbuing them with an identical important drive; bushy, bony, wispy, undulating life types.

Presently, Kirkwood is engaged on just a few collection centered on documenting life within the Lake District. You possibly can discover a broader assortment of her images on her site and Instagram. (through MetaFilter)

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