Kevin Horan

CHATTEL If the photographer’s ungulate neighbors came to the studio and asked to have their portraits made, this is what would happen. Treated as portrait subjects, they seem to have personalities. Perhaps they do, and the photograph allows us to see it. Or perhaps the language of the photo cues us to generate the impression of a personage. One wonders if that interplay is any different here than it is in pictures of humans. This is a work about portraiture: what it does and how it works. I’ve made portraits of people for many years, and the chemistry of it is still mysterious. I am used to telling subjects that a good portrait is a collaboration between photographer and subject. But how do you collaborate with a goat? A goat you’ve just met? These pictures insist upon active engagement of our own feelings about the souls within other beings, human or otherwise, and how visible they are from the outside. If we are paying attention to our own responses, we must grapple with the cause of our response: Theory A: these creatures have the light of sentience inside, and I am connecting with it. Theory B: the application of the tradition of photographic portraiture—the lighting, pose, background—nudges us into an anthropomorphic comfort zone.