Word: norfleet
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Have you ever seen a Megaloxantha nemixanitha? A Chelorrhira polyphorus confluens? A Chrysochroa bugueti, or a Damaster blapordes mantames? Didn't think so. But Barbara Norfleet has, and she's got pictures to prove...
...Norfleet is the founder, director and curator of the Photography Collection at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts and her new book The Illusion of Orderly Progress is a collection of photographs of insects. Having published multiple photographic collections before in a similar style, the medium and the style are not new to either Norfleet or her audience. So we are forced to ask the obvious question: why bugs...
...Insects" project, Norfleet brings together the natural and social typologies of her earlier work. Norfleet uses bugs from entomological supply shops, ranging from ants to dragonflies to stag beetles. She poses them in scenes with various props and elaborate (terrarium-like) backdrops to create photographs of fantastic encounters in fantastic colors...
...straight-forward anthropological work. Some deal with romance and male-female relationships, such as "Am I Pretty?" an arrangement of seven stag beetles on pebble-wall. One beetle holds a yellow star-shape bead meant to represent a crown. The human cult the beauty pageant is played out by Norfleet's arthropod actors...
...Color Bar" broaches the issue of race, as group of black beetles and a group of green beetle face off atop a pile of old bones. Although technical dead, each group seems alive in its moment of confrontation. The sky in the background is dark and menacing. As in Norfleet's other work, the contrasts run deep, as anthropology is simultaneously charted and created...