Bestiary

Bestiaries are ancient manuscripts that weave together tales of every kind of creature – real or imagined. Rather than a naturalistic description, these texts cast the world as a mirror of divine truth. Offering moral lessons through the lives and the natures of beings great and small. Anne Geene and Arjan de Nooy create a photographic bestiary inspired by the ancient ‘Physiologus’. Drawing on quotations from a recent translation and blending found images with their own, they breathe new life into this mystical text. Though their approach is neither Christian nor didactic, the behaviours revealed by the creatures still offer stories from which moral insights may quietly emerge.