Friday, February 18, 2011

02.21.11 : Artist Entry : Tamara Kenneally

Tamara Kenneally is an award winning, animal based photographic artist situated in Melbourne, Australia. She has a passionate interest in animal behavior, animal rights and animal welfare which greatly influence her work. She has a degree in Media Arts (fine art photography) and post graduate qualifications in Animal Welfare.

She hails from a film photography background and has a passion for creating her images within her camera, this means no cropping and very little post processing on her images. Tamara likes to work with natural light and settings. She believes that animals do not belong in the studio. Tamara has also worked in photographic retail for 10 years and is an experienced photographic printer as well as having a total of 5 years uni/tafe photographic education.

Animal rights and welfare are one of Tamara's main passions in life and most of her work revolves around an animal welfare theme. She is currently working on a series called “No walks today” about neglected suburban dogs.

"The beauty of animals captivates me. Their truth, instinct and innocence grounds me. All I ever wanted to do was to be surrounded by animals, they tell you exactly who they are through their eyes and their behavior. Humans create so much pain for so many animals and without a voice they can’t tell their stories. I try to speak for them through my images.I produce bodies of work which look at animal issues whilst also portraying the beauty of the animal." - Tamara Kenneally

"I like to represent my subjects as the individual souls and personalities they are. All animals are worthy of a happy, enriched life. All of them. The dog chained up in the backyard next door. The chicken at the factory farm. The bird in the cage. The tiger at the zoo.The pig in the sow stall. All of them." - Tamara Kenneally

I researched Tamara as a juxtaposition to my own work. While my work addresses the captivity of animals, it is not meant to speak as an animals rights protest as her work clearly does. The differences in our work is really important to me. I do not want my work to be read in the same manner as her work is meant to. While I agree with some of the ideas regarding animal rights that she addresses, I would not approach it in such a direct manner or style.

Tamara Kenneally
Gallery

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