Personal Statement

I believe in interspecies love. I believe that our relationship with “the others” keeps our hearts open.

Living with animals hones our compassion.

Living with animals keeps us awake and attuned to the natural world.

Living with animals confirms our connection to the wild. 

Though this relationship is ideally experienced between creatures, I believe that living with images, icons if you will, of the animals we admire and we relate to reminds of of our own highest selves in the best possible way. 

Once I began avidly photographing animals, as well as their relationship to humans, my path became clear. 

This focus began in earnest the summer of 93 when I bought a house in the country and started hanging around small barnyards. I found that I could spend hours watching (and very soon thereafter, photographing ) the barnyard inhabitants in all their natural grace. Their relations with each other, their attentions all of it was so interesting and then when their natural curiosity would lead them to investigate me and my camera the moments of soul to soul contact were well, excruciatingly wonderful ! I felt honored really. 

I try to express this feeling through the lens of my medium format camera. I share my reverence and share the gaze of a soul in a different incarnation (other than human). This process like a meditation takes me out of my busy head and into my expansive heart. 

I invite you and your expansive heart to share an acknowledgement of the power of this communion. 

Take the time to consider the shamanic meanings that humans have for millennia given to the different species. Consider the descriptions and see if they confirm what values you hold dear or are intrigued by. Or ask yourself what traits you associate with the animals whose images delight you and consider how this attributions reflect you. Grace, gentility, nobility, mystery, strength, humor, mischief… just some of the qualities that are expressed so naturally as there is only candor in their world. 

In the grace of a natural life there is both comfort and surrender. We can learn from “the others”.

I invite you to share in the celebration of interspecies love.

Books

Jr. Blount Roy & Valerie Shaff, If Only You Knew How Much I Smell You: True Portraits Of Dogs, 1998. Bulfinch Press Little Brown & Co.

Jr. Blount Roy & Valerie Shaff, Am I Pig Enough For You Yet, 2001. Harper Perennial

Jr. Blount Roy & Valerie Shaff, I Am Puppy Hear Me Yap, 2004. Harper Perennial

Jr. Blount Roy & Valerie Shaff, I Am The Cat , Don't Forget That, 2004. Harper Perennial

Valerie Shaff, The Future According to Kids, 2000. Roundtable Press