Some assumptions are so deeply ingrained that it's difficult to imagine the world from another perspective. Take taxonomy: We're raised to see nature through an essentially 18th century system of classification, one rooted in the urge to impose order on a vibrant, messy world.
Not that there's anything wrong with order, of course, and taxonomies are quite useful. But sometimes, says artist James Prosek, they get in the way. We perceive names instead of beings, representative types instead of individual animals pulsing with life.
"I'm interested in exploring how we might be able to communicate nature differently," Prosek said. "The way we communicate nature affects the way we perceive and treat it."
Prosek rose to natural history acclaim in 1997, when Trout: An Illustrated History earned him comparisons to John James Audubon, the great naturalist and painter whose name is now synonymous with nature's beauty.
Like Audubon, Prosek is a conservationist, but in the years following Trout, written while Prosek was still an undergraduate, his art evolved beyond natural history. Prosek still employs the visual language of that tradition, but he now challenges its conventions.
In Ocean Fishes, his new book and collection of paintings, Prosek urges people to see nature, and especially the fish he loves so dearly, in a new light: Forget taxonomic checkboxes and biodiversity and ecosystem services, and think about a single creature's life.
On the following pages, Prosek takes Wired on a tour of his new work.
Above:In the Studio
Each of the paintings in Ocean Fishes is life-sized and modeled on an individual fish that Prosek saw in person, alive and still flushed with colors that fade within moments of death. To paint this blue marlin, he traveled to the Cape Verde islands off West Africa. At fifteen feet long, it's the largest of the new paintings.
Image: James Prosek (High-Resolution Version)
