You might know by now that we love when artists and photographers use animals as subjects for their creations. In his long-running portrait series titled Second Skins, artist Miguel Vallinas uses wildlife photographic portraits as a starting point to construct fictional wardrobes that he imagines each animal might wear if it were dressed as a human. A similar project to Alex Castro’s animal portrait form 2011.
On the surface, Second Skins is a humorous series of portraits guaranteed for a smile, but dig a bit deeper and Vallinas suggests the images reveal a more about human nature than the animal kingdom. Specifically, how we perceive people based on appearance and how we create narratives in our mind based wholly on what we see. Vallinas says he is also examining elements of self-perception, specifically “what we believe we are, what others think we are, what we really are, and what we would like to be.”
For his latest body of work titled Roots, Vallinas again explores identity through similarly dressed boquets of flowers or plants matched with remarkably fitting attire. You can see much more on his website.
Via Colossal