Robin Schwartz: Shibu, Crab Eating Macaque, male, 1 year old

“Each primate’s unique personality is recorded. I incorporated elements from paintings, illustrations and my fantasy images into the photographs.”—Robin Schwartz

Aperture first highlighted Robin Schwartz’s work in the publication Amelia’s World (Aperture, 2008) as part of the Tinyvices volumes, including photographs of her daughter Amelia with a menagerie of animals. In Primate Portraits, the artist’s foci are apes and monkeys, and all pictures are made within three feet of the subjects and are never shot through bars or Plexiglas cages. Each of the primates photographed in the series is privately cared for, contributing to the diversity of relationships, environments, and personal possessions that the artist captures within her frame. Schwartz has an uncanny empathy with her animal subjects, allowing for an intensity of eye contact. Photographing on different visits, she becomes friends with the apes and monkeys that inhabit her pictures. She purposely chooses moments that do not represent “the everyday world of monkeys and apes in captivity,” but instead what she calls her “dream world of primates.”

Each limited-edition print is hand-packed with great care and ships from New York within 3–5 days.