Photos of animals during pandemic invoke Josh Keyes' paintings
Josh Keyes' eerie paintings of animals in post-human environments immediately struck a chord with me when I first learned about his work several years ago in Juxtapoz and Hi Fructose magazines.
Here are a few examples: Frenzy (2017), Stairway to Heaven (2018), Red Dawn (2018), White Noise (2015), Summit (2017), Turbulence (2015), The Exchange II (2012), and Scorch II (2009).
Maybe you could see why pictures of animals wandering around suddenly people-free places during the pandemic lockdown immediately made Keyes come to my mind.
From top to bottom, left to right: a goat strolling through a town in Wales, a sea lion on a sidewalk in Argentina, deer crossing the street in Japan, lions napping in the road in South Africa, a raccoon out for a jaunt in Central Park, and a coyote posing near the Golden Gate Bridge (mages courtesy of ABC News, Insider, and The Guardian).
We may have a ways to go before we see Keyes' vision come to fruition (see my Instagram post from a couple of weeks back), but it does beg the proverbial question, who's imitating who, life or art?
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