Andrew Zuckerman’s images, whether they be animals or portraits of distinguished personalities, are not only striking and detailed, but inspiring. They show an encapsulated part of his subjects. The grace of a giraffe. The majesty of a bird. The silence in the wake of communication’s absence. The years that earned a person’s intelligence.

All these he compiled in his books—fruits of several year’s worth of hard work and an endless supply of passion and enthusiasm—which are, quite understandably, gaining recognition from individuals and award-giving bodies alike.

One of his books, Creature, has received admiration from several photography sites. Well-known talk show host Ellen DeGeneres even interviewed Andrew in her show about this book. Take a look at that interview here:

The simplicity of the animals’ images in Creature highlighted not only the features of every creature, but their essence. Andrew’s style in taking photos in this way is influenced by several incidences in his life, but is central to his fascination in animals.

His initial interest in such creatures is deeply rooted: as a child, his family, who then resided in Maryland, often visited museums in Washington, D.C. Andrew admits to being awed at the life-sized, taxidermied animals that are displayed in their natural settings in the museum.

The museum, this time the museum of National History in New York, became a regular hangout for Andrew when he was attending art school. His apartment did not have the comfort that an air condition provided, and to escape the sometimes unbearable heat in his apartment, he frequented the museum. Incidentally, his interests in the animals he admired back on those long-ago Sunday family outings to Washington museums were reignited.

Then, one cold morning in February, as he was king a walk at Orient Point in Long Island, he came across a dead bird that lay in the pristine-white snow. A few bones, a topic that was another great interest of Andrew’s, were also shot in this manner.

As Andrew struggled to keep his own studio alive, and his interest in bones began to fade, he bought an ant farm to photograph some ants. He realized that his interest wasn’t in the ant farm, but in the ants themselves. He took the ants and placed them against a white setting, and photographed them. This was how he came to realize that the ants, which were stripped from its context and environment, the focus on their behavior, rather than their purpose or their relation to the environment, is heightened. In this way, he was able to capture the character of the ants and magnify their form, texture, and movement.

This was how he would shoot the animals that were included in Creature. Over five years (2002-2007), he shot animals, both ordinary and exotic, in his studio against a spotless white background. Trainers brought all kinds of animals–normal, exotic, and sometimes, even wild creatures–to his studio, and they were allowed to move freely. In this way Andrew successfully cleared the clutter that would otherwise distract the viewer’s eye from every creature’s essence and characters, and produced astounding results. In his words: “By removing all sense of context and capturing the most infinitesimal movement, I hope not only to preserve a moment in time, but to completely eliminate the idea of time.”

“I wanted these images to feel like the taxidermy I was so drawn to in the national history museums: stoic, frozen, and engaged in singular thought,” he finishes.

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