The Circle of Life: 24 Photos of a Food Chain in Action

Photography Tips

Warning: You may never want to eat a tomato again. In her series known as “Food Chain,” photographer Catherine Chalmers has documented a food chain that you might find in your garden patch. Starting with a caterpillar feasting on a tomato and ending with a happy toad, the series is simultaneously fascinating and repulsive. Watching insects devour others against a clean white background is not exactly a common photographic subject, but as Chalmers said in an interview with Vice:

“My work aims to give form to the richness, as well as the brutality and indifference that often characterize our relationship with animals. My ultimate wish is to broaden the cultural significance of the non-human world.”

“Two hundred years ago, maybe less, most people were farmers or ranchers and raised a good amount of their own food. They were intimately connected with the processes of nature. Food chains were obvious. No need to make art about them.”