"My Nonhuman Friends (2021) is a photo series by photographer Nika Sandler. Two years ago, she lost a close feline friend. This triggered her to immerse herself in the memories of cats and reflect on their impact on her life. She has always been surrounded by them and their friendship began at a very young age. She tried to look at and recall the smallest details in a catlike, far-sighted way, creating still lives with objects that remember the touches and smell of her friends. Some of the photos are taken from a cat’s perspective, using a small camera attached to a cat’s collar, giving a glimpse of how they see the world. Other photos are archival ones of the cats in her life, taken by her, and of her, as a child. The series gives shape to a deeply felt empathy and connection explored through photography.
"My Nonhuman Friends (2021) is a photo series by photographer Nika Sandler. Two years ago, she lost a close feline friend. This triggered her to immerse herself in the memories of cats and reflect on their impact on her life. She has always been surrounded by them and their friendship began at a very young age. She tried to look at and recall the smallest details in a catlike, far-sighted way, creating still lives with objects that remember the touches and smell of her friends. Some of the photos are taken from a cat’s perspective, using a small camera attached to a cat’s collar, giving a glimpse of how they see the world. Other photos are archival ones of the cats in her life, taken by her, and of her, as a child. The series gives shape to a deeply felt empathy and connection explored through photography.
My Nonhuman Friends won an award in a category created especially for this series, Posthuman Postphotography. The five photos have an average weight of 100 kB. Sandler’s work challenges hegemonic definitions of technology by using ‘poor’ images, low resolution ones, taken with old or very limited cameras, shifting perspective to give expression, and deepen a connection, to the non-human. Sandler’s work matches Ingrid Hoelzl and Remi Marie’s concept of the ‘common image’ [@hoelzl:2022]. Hoelzl and Marie describe the perspectival image as the foundation of humanist ideology, “which located Homo sapiens at the center of an inanimate, dumbfounded ‘world’ in need of human ruling […] a foundation of the ideology of rationality, progress, and human exceptionalism […]” [@hoelzl:2022, p.11]. In its stead, they propose a ‘common image’, which doesn’t place humans apart from the world and doesn’t count on human ingenuity to ‘fix’ climate change, but which is based on more humble world views, a being-in-relation, a multisensory perception that transcends species-bound ways of living. They advocate otherness as a common ground for a larger than human communism. Sandler’s work takes steps towards such a world view, out of a profoundly felt love and in search of the common. In the last work this shift in perspective merges with the choice of medium".
My Nonhuman Friends won an award in a category created especially for this series, Posthuman Postphotography. The five photos have an average weight of 100 kB. Sandler’s work challenges hegemonic definitions of technology by using ‘poor’ images, low resolution ones, taken with old or very limited cameras, shifting perspective to give expression, and deepen a connection, to the non-human. Sandler’s work matches Ingrid Hoelzl and Remi Marie’s concept of the ‘common image’ [@hoelzl:2022]. Hoelzl and Marie describe the perspectival image as the foundation of humanist ideology, “which located Homo sapiens at the center of an inanimate, dumbfounded ‘world’ in need of human ruling […] a foundation of the ideology of rationality, progress, and human exceptionalism […]” [@hoelzl:2022, p.11]. In its stead, they propose a ‘common image’, which doesn’t place humans apart from the world and doesn’t count on human ingenuity to ‘fix’ climate change, but which is based on more humble world views, a being-in-relation, a multisensory perception that transcends species-bound ways of living. They advocate otherness as a common ground for a larger than human communism. Sandler’s work takes steps towards such a world view, out of a profoundly felt love and in search of the common. In the last work this shift in perspective merges with the choice of medium".
With many thanks to Marloes de Valk for her interest in the work and her kind permission to publish this excerpt.
With many thanks to Marloes de Valk for her interest in the work and her kind permission to publish this excerpt.