Fine Art Animal Photography - We, Animals
Aleksandar Damnjanović
“A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection — not an invitation for hypnosis.”
Umberto Eco
When I started photographing animal figurines, the idea was never to talk about them — but about us. We, Animals is a fine art photography project made over three years (2024–2026). Each image uses Schleich animal figurines — not to speak about animals, but to hold up a mirror to what we have become, and what we risk forgetting. Each animal asks one question: what does it mean to be human?
In the small space a studio offers, something unexpected happened. Playing with these figurines, I found a world that is astonishingly real — because it is ours. The gorilla’s maternal concern. The elephant’s fear of fire. The rhinoceros standing at the end of the year, gazing at the earth, while shadows play on cave walls. I did not choose these animals to illustrate ideas. They arrived already carrying them.
Pointing to the animal world — while speaking of the human — each of us is left to draw their own conclusions. To think critically about our own actions in relation to other people, animals, plants. To choose, as Miloš Crnjanski’s Sumatra taught me, the sense of connection. Because we are all, together, part of Life on Earth.
Three Cycles of Fine Art Animal Photography
Three emotional worlds. One accumulating story.
2024
Empathy & Earth
A return to elemental emotions. The animal as vessel for human vulnerability. A human hand — worn, imperfect, unmistakably alive — holding a chimpanzee. What the hand says, no caption could improve upon.
Key totem: Chimpanzee
2025
Cosmos & Myth
Animals become archetypes on a starlit stage. Ancient myth meets intimate gesture. The series orbits one figure: Orpheus eternal wanderer between worlds, between loss and beauty.
Key totem: The Horse / Orpheus
2026
Metamorphosis.exe
The language shifts. Each photograph carries an .exe filename — a named state of consciousness. This calendar is a log file of a year. It does not tell you what to do. It simply runs.
Key totem: The Lion / pulse.exe status: idle
What Critics Say
“The series of photographs represents an image of reality, through whose interpretation we enter the world of archetypal frameworks of contemporary society.”
Katarina Nikolić — art critic
“Presence strikes us harder, because it is precisely in the present that we feel most intensely.”
Mirjana Ognjanović — essayist
“Skillful experimentation with light and perspective has allowed play to be transformed into a serious story.”
Maja Škaljac Stanošević — art historian
About the Artist
Aleksandar Damnjanović is a Belgrade-based photographer and creative director. He holds the QEP designation — Qualified European Photographer — awarded by the Federation of European Professional Photographers (FEP), Brussels.
We, Animals was exhibited at Gallery Nikola Radošević, Belgrade, 2024.
→ europeanphotographers.eu/members/aleksandar-damnjanovic/Limited Editions
Each work in the We, Animals collection is produced at WhiteWall, Germany — the same lab trusted by LUMAS and leading European galleries.