Road Kill Series by Lynne Anderson
Shown Exclusively at La Petite Mort Gallery, 2005.
Roadkill by Lynne Anderson (Ottawa, Canada)
The idea to shoot road kill came to me in the summer of 2005. After passing yet another groundhog on the side of the road and being struck by the shape and composition of the corpse, I had the strongest desire to capture that shape on film. To me it was strangely interesting and beautiful, even in its mangled state. It seemed only natural then for me to examine the subject intimately.
I’ve always been fascinated by the manner in which things die. There is something so profound about the moment that a heart stops beating or lungs stop taking in air…the instant that the blood stops flowing and everything is still. After an entire life experienced and lived it seems as though the manner of ending that life is often what defines it.
Curiously enough, we humans dress up our corpses in fancy suits and best Sunday dresses, apply an unnatural amount of makeup to their lifeless faces and put them on display for all to see, touch and kiss. In the case of road kill, we often want to look out of curiosity but usually turn away in disgust as we quickly speed by. By taking a closer look at these roadside corpses myself and presenting them for others to examine, my hope was that people would get past the disgust and see the beauty that lay there.