Jeanette May Flora & Fauna, 2007 ©

Having spent ages escaping the uncertainties of nature in the development of a civilization, many of us find we are no longer completely comfortable in a completely natural environment. Nor are we completely comfortable in a completely artificial environment. When we can wed the two—creating a civilized space endowed with natural elements or a natural space that easily accommodates our wonted uses—we are happiest.

Beyond the Lawn: Unique Outdoor Spaces for Modern Living

Flora and Fauna combines photographs of suburban front yards and of stuffed animals, insects, and birds to examine our society’s anxious relationship with the natural world. The untamed wilderness makes us uneasy, but with a tape measure, shovel, and pruning sheers, our quarter acre plot of earth can be transformed into a neatly organized formal garden, terraced woodland, or potted jungle. This body of work identifies a local variety of the attempt to control nature.

The project consists of digitally-composed archival pigment prints on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag paper. Photographs of manicured lawns, shaped hedges, cultivated flowerbeds, and stone-rimmed water features attest to the homeowner’s manipulation of natural elements in order to produce garden sanctuaries. Stuffed raccoons, nut-cracking squirrels, and tie-dyed bats evidence a desire to contain troublesome or scary creatures that threaten to disrupt one’s domestic security. Quotations from gardening guidebooks provide clear instruction for the design and reconstruction of the natural world.

Romanticized, feared, and radio-collared, the natural world is more threatened by humankind than we are by it. Flora and Fauna seeks to depict a central issue of our age—humanities’ troubled relationship with the environment—in a manner that is whimsical and non-confrontational yet analytic.