The humanity of Animality: New special exhibit at CCP puts animals at the center of the lens

For Tucson residents looking for a different way to experience the University of Arizona’s Center for Creative Photography, “Animality: 100 Years of Photographs” places animals at the heart of the museum visit. The special exhibition is on view through Dec. 12, offering a chance to see photographs from one of the world’s most important photography collections while considering how people understand, depict and relate to animals. Its subject may be familiar, but the exhibition’s structure asks visitors to look beyond a simple display of wildlife images or portraits of pets.

The exhibition was created through a partnership between the Center for Creative Photography’s curatorial staff and UA students. Instead of arranging the photographs only according to the artists who made them or the years in which they were produced, the students organized the work into thematic groups. Each cluster brings several images together around a connection identified by the students, giving visitors a way to move through the exhibition based on ideas and visual relationships rather than a traditional historical sequence.

Student involvement extends beyond selecting the groupings. Students also wrote the interpretive text accompanying the clusters, explaining why they believed particular photographs belonged together and what links they saw among them. Valeria Villagrana, a student worker at the Center for Creative Photography, described the result as a series of visual groupings supported by a paragraph from the student who developed each one. That approach makes the act of interpretation visible, showing visitors not only the photographs but also how a new audience can find meaning in works from a major archive.

For people who visit museums regularly, the student perspective offers a fresh way to encounter photographs by artists whose work has been studied for generations. For those who do not usually feel comfortable in museums, the project is also intended to lower the distance between the institution and the public. Museum officials say the collaborative format is part of a broader effort to make the Center for Creative Photography more inviting to first time visitors and to people who may not think they belong in a museum setting.

That question of belonging is especially important in a university museum, where the building can seem connected primarily to students, researchers or experienced art audiences. The exhibition’s organizers want visitors to understand that no special background is required to enter the space or respond to the work. By allowing students to explain the connections they found, the display creates multiple points of entry. Visitors can focus on the animals, the photographers, the emotional qualities of the pictures or the ideas expressed in the written commentary.

The Center for Creative Photography gives the exhibition an unusually deep historical foundation. Established in 1975, the institution holds archives associated with some of the most influential photographers of the last century. Its holdings include the work of Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and Harry Callahan, among others. “Animality” draws from those internationally recognized archives, placing a century of photographic practice into a presentation centered on animals and the relationships people form with them.

The exhibition’s subject also gives the museum an opportunity to present photography through experiences many visitors can recognize immediately. Animals can appear as companions, subjects of observation or figures through which photographers explore human emotion and behavior. Visitors Terrie Sherman and Annette Cremisi, who said they visit the Center regularly, found the new exhibition particularly moving. Sherman described the images as visually powerful and said their focus on animals and their connections with people made the experience feel positive, accepting and warm.

That response points to one of the exhibition’s central strengths. The photographs are not presented only as examples of technique or as historical documents. They also invite viewers to consider affection, recognition and shared experience. Sherman said the images were engaging and worth the time required to see them. Her reaction suggests that the exhibition can work for visitors who arrive interested in photography as well as those drawn first by the subject of animals.

“Animality: 100 Years of Photographs” remains on display at the University of Arizona’s Center for Creative Photography through Dec. 12. For Tucsonans, the show offers both a look at celebrated photographic archives and a chance to see how UA students shape a public exhibition. The result is a museum experience built around animals, but also around participation, accessibility and the different ways viewers create connections among images.