Bestiary - His selection

In Orpheus's procession, Apollinaire features the cat, the tortoise, the fly, the flea, and the octopus—"this inhuman monster is myself," he wrote of the latter. At a time when we are passionate about the unity of life, would a bestiary of today be very different? First, it would include an Adam, Anne Roger-Lacan's L'homme Heureux, and an Eve, Marcel Miracle's Une dame très sélect, who would come to life joyfully like Elsa Sahal's Dancing Twins. In this bestiary, there would be melancholic animals, perhaps pedal-boat swans like Erwin Olaf's, teddy bears like the one held in her arms by the young pregnant woman photographed by Sophie Bramly. There would be plastic dinosaurs pinned like butterflies in a Mark Dion cabinet of curiosities, and perhaps also a slightly dented Mickey, washed up on a beach, caught nose-deep in the sand by Tami Notsani. Some animals would be a bit like machines, like Zhenya Machneva's messy robot. And even broken machines, like Nelson Pernisco's For Things That Remain Raw. All would be chimeras, each in their own way, like Françoise Vergier's The Goddess of the Green Moon, or Seb Janiak's Mimesis-Hibiscus Trinium. Some would have wings like Jean Messagier's flower-bird, like Maya Inès Touam's creatures, like James Rielly's wave-fish.