When reading the book “Dead Animals” by Shu Hung and Joe Magliaro, artists and designers, illustrators and photographers from New York who moved to Beijing in January 2006, a bright smile came upon my face. On a Majorca holiday trip I once took a picture of a stuffed squirrel sitting in an olive tree.
On the 37 pages of the limited edition book (250 copies) we see stuffed animals in an environment they don’t belong in: in the gutter, among garbage, in the middle of a landscape. The first time they saw one, Shu and Joe thought their first homeless stuffed animal - dirty and abused from being left to the elements - to be a real dead animal. But after a brief moment of relief they asked themselves: “What does this scenario tell us about the owners of orphaned cuddly toys?“
“We are interested in how these inanimate figures seem to convey an emotional story”, Joe Magliaro says. “You assume that the cast-off you are looking at was once loved and held by someone. Which leads to the next question: Where is that person now?” The idea took hold of them and did not let go. Starting in New York’s Chinatown in 2004, they continued this photo series during all their many travels. But the majority of their “dead animals” were discovered in the hutongs of Beijing, where homes have been demolished to make way for redevelopment, making the project a sobering reminder of the many sacrifices that accompany the development of their new hometown.
After releasing their book “By Hand”, profiling 35 artists worldwide who are using traditional craft materials and processes with Princeton Architectural Press in 2006, “Dead Animals” is now the first release of their own publishing imprint, Historical Fiction Press. For HF Press, both are doing editorial duties, distribution, PR and design. Apart from several other projects in development, Shu Hung and Joe Magliaro plan to launch a website called www.dead-animals.com for others to upload their own photos in an online “global archive of lost and abandoned stuffed animals”. The Majorcan squirrel will be my first contribution to this extraordinary project.
Links:
http://www.dead-animals.com
http://www.shuandjoe.com
