Amelia Forman, who we introduced one year ago, is not your average teenager. Since she was a child, she has shared a warm and deep connection with animals, loving and playing with them like her own siblings. Her mother, award-winning photographer and photography professor Robin Schwartz, has been there to capture the intimate interactions between Amelia and animals for the past 12 years. For Amelia, being so close to animals–from dogs, cats, and horses to monkeys, kangaroos, and deer–is so natural that she didn't even realize how unusual her encounters were until recently, when people told her how lucky she is to meet such a variety of unique animals.
Now 15 years old, Amelia has become even more involved in the photographic process, becoming an active collaborator with her mother. She contributes ideas for the shoots, requests certain animals to work with, and even suggests different color palettes. As a result, the series has become even more experimental and indicative of their shared mother-daughter journey.
“I am driven to depict relationships with animals, but the photographs are not documents. they are evidence of the invented worlds that we explore and the fables we enact together,” says Schwartz. “The world that my daughter and I explore is one where the line between humans and animals overlaps, where animals are part of our world and humans are part of theirs.”
Following up on her first photo book Amelia's World, Schwartz is raising funds to publish a second book, titled Amelia and the Animals. The volume, due to be published in fall 2014 by the Aperture Foundation, will contain even more photos of Amelia and her intimate interactions with animals, including recent photos that have never been shown publicly before. For anyone interested in contributing to the campaign, be sure to check out the project on Kickstarter.
