Alexander James discusses the lengthy process behind his surreal image of several generations of butterflies. He explains all to Jade Severs.
This image is taken from the series ‘Transparency of a Dream’, where I placed butterflies underwater and photographed them suspended in a dream-like state. When removed from the water they were unharmed. I was inspired to do this project when I was working in Moscow and found out that my estranged father had died and been buried for two years before I’d known about it.
It was this knowledge that triggered the idea of photographing generations of butterflies and was a project that would take two years of my life to complete.
Breeding butterflies
In order to create this surreal sensation of butterfly descendants dancing with one another – something that never occurs in nature – I had the idea of layering generation upon generation of butterflies within a single transparency. This required me to breed several generations of butterflies over two years.
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