Whether Barnes's work is about logic, instinct, nature, or artifice is a question that should be arbitrated in higher courts than this. Zoologists, museum professionals, biologists, semioticians, linguists, and philosophers should address the implications of these images. What appears as calculated, methodical, almost maniacally nonsensical human energy invested in the storage, transportation, display, and conservation of animal forms in the first three-fifths of Animal Logic (three sections devoted to Barnes's series "Container," "Diorama," and "Skull") is turned inside-out, phenomenologically speaking, in the final two sections, "Refuge" and "Murmur." Even animals, these latter sections argue with exquisitely-seen, empirical evidence, operate with indecipherable grace on both individual and collective levels. The typologically-rendered nests of "Refuge" impute the presence and actions of an avian collector/curator/contractor/caretaker gene; likewise, the airborne flocks of countless thousands of Roman starlings apprehended in "Murmur" reveal the animal uncanny more than they do anything we mere humans might comprehend as logic. Both series offer graphic, clear, evocative descriptions of things beyond our kin.




The disconnect between Animal Logic's two worlds--human interpretation and intercession in the first, mysterious animal behavior in the latter--is at first take almost irreconcilable. Natural history dioramas, labs and back rooms, and mounted specimens have been "done" by so many other photographers; this familiarity gives one pause. However, Barnes's photographs reach beyond their frames to describe an overarching sense of system; this linkage is absent from much of the work predating his. The anomalous yet purposeful presence of conservators and modelers in the dioramas, for instance, stresses the quality of will at work in such worlds; likewise, the animal forms that incongruously appear in closets, boxes, and assorted scientific environs suggest surreal interweaving of wilderness and man-made society (this dichotomy is laid out with marvelous clarity in a shot/reverse-shot two-page spread, featuring a deer diorama from both sides of the antlers). Animals indoors are simultaneously the centerpieces, the raisons d'etre, for visitors outside the glass, and just another prop to work around for those inside the frames, another fragile object to fashion custom storage containers for by those behind the scenes.



Altogether, Animal Logic constitutes an argument about what can and can't be shown using our familiar tools, and about the breadth of the field we must encompass in our attempts to gain understanding of our earthly context. All of these players and interpretive strategies have roles within the conceptual construct of Barnes's remarkable book, a profound, apt, and intelligent exploration of real world enigmas and natural science wonders. —George Slade