Humans are animals. Every species, past, present or future, is composed of the same fundamental elements essential for life. We are the products of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution by natural selection. We adapt to our environment, and struggle to survive in this world for however brief our time may be. Are we so different from birds or bears, from frogs or foxes? Do we not exhibit the same fundamental behaviour?  

 

We are certainly not the only creatures that have a personality, who can feel joy, pain or anger, to love and be loved. We see it in the grief of a lioness mourning the loss of a cub and the devotion of an emperor penguin guarding its eggs for months at a time. Everyday we are discovering behaviours in animals that we once believed were uniquely human qualities. In the past we thought of ourselves as man the tool maker, a trait that defined our species. But in 1960,  Jane Goodall  observed a chimpanzee pick up a small twig, strip off the leaves, and poke the tip into a termite mound to pick out insects. From that moment onwards, we were no longer the only creature that made and used tools and thus we had to  “redefine tool, redefine man, or accept chimpanzees as humans."--- Louis Leakey. I choose to morph of photograph of Jane Goodall, the woman who redefined our species, into a chimpanzee, our closest living relative, to portray this idea that we are not different from other species. And therefore we should value their lives just as we value our own. The morphed portrait reflects a personal value centred around animal rights which emphasizes this idea that fundamentally all life is the same and therefore we cannot treat animals with cruelty or indifference. I intended my work to to be interpreted with shock-value --- to startle and disturb. After all, we like to think of ourselves as something different from animals and we often forget that we once shared a common ancestor.  Perhaps the morphed portrait will allow us take a walk in their shoes, so to speak, and recognize the similarities we share. One of the greatest challenges I encountered was finding a photograph of a chimpanzee that was similar to a portrait of Jane Goodall to create a seamless transformation. In the end, I never found the perfect photograph, instead I followed my teacher’s suggestion to illustrate the transformation by hand. I am most proud of the smooth transition between each frame because I was unsure of how subtle the changes were until I animated the series in photoshop. If had more time I would experiment with different people, animals and poses to further emphasize the similarities between the two.