Familiar British Wildlife.

Some citations : Clive Landen's Familiar British Wildlife series deals with 'roadkills'. ... The ostensible content of the collection of these images is the carcasses and remains of domestic wildlife lying by the side of the road. They are all photographed in the same formal manner using a tripod signifying a kind of forensic strategy at work. They are the physical evidence of the unfortunate conjunction of vehicle and animal (although some of them are so well laid out that they seem orchestrated). The forensic reading is reinforced by the titling of the images using the precise zoological nomenclature and the road reference number indicating the general location of the event. This textual information accompanying the image is reminiscent of an exhibit from the Natural History museum, whose institutional rhetoric insists at one and the same time on the beauty and diversity of 'nature' and on the desire to control and order the chaos of Nature. The ironic mimicking of the optics of instrumental reason by Landen attempts to force a consideration of the relationship between human endeavour and wildlife and by implication 'nature' and the environment.