Animals
Meet the Animals
Street photography project by Jill Maguire
This project started in early 2014 as a project to find a project. I wasn’t satisfied with the street photography I’d been doing haphazardly around Seattle. My work had no cohesion and was completely out of the league of the masters I’d been studying. Frustrated, I started visiting a different event or location each weekend, knowing a project would eventually find me. I just kept exploring until I found a place I wanted to revisit. That place was Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo.
Initially, the zoo checked a lot of boxes for me — easy parking, open year-round, visitors from all walks of life. But the zoo quickly became special to me. I got to know the animals and their keepers, and I learned about habitat destruction, poaching, and conservation. And then a few geriatric animals passed away, birthdays were celebrated, and babies were born. I was hooked.
The challenge for me photographically was finding a unique vision without copying the work of fellow zoo-goers like Garry Winogrand and Rebecca Norris Webb. So I just started looking for interesting moments that involved people and animals, trusting that a theme would eventually emerge. In fact, it was Rebecca and Alex Webb who, during a workshop, started pulling together my prints where the animals mimicked the people and the landscape, or the people acted like animals, or the animals and people weren’t quite what they seemed. I’m grateful for their insight to help me narrow my focus to those rare moments of serendipitous similarity.
Along the way, I found I work well within the confines of a single location. I tried visiting other zoos and came away empty-handed. It just wasn’t practical for me to travel to other zoos like Rebecca did for The Glass Between Us, so I gave myself permission not to. Besides, I’m too anxious in new places. I like familiarity, and this zoo is my zoo. It provides a long and varied punch list of animals and habitats to photograph, and going back year after year has taught me the rhythm of the visitors, the animals, and the light.
As I write this, it’s mid-November in Seattle, and it’s raining a lot (my kryptonite), so I have to psych myself up for shooting in the rain at the zoo’s annual Turkey Toss this weekend. I want to visit Pete, their oldest gorilla (who lost his mate Nina last year) and check in on baby gorilla Yola, who turns 1 soon. Did they ever find a new mate for Sam the siamang after Briony passed away? I’ll find one of the volunteers to ask. And I haven’t heard the final count of penguin chicks hatched this summer. I’ll stick around til 2pm for the penguin keeper talk. I may or may not get a good picture while I’m there.
Jill Maguire is a Seattle-based street photographer who divides her time between the Woodland Park Zoo, dog events, and the Washington State Fair.










Left Behind: Dogs in Cars
This November we introduce “Everywhere Street,” a series examining the boundaries of street photography, and just what are the rules of where it can be found. When we take away most of the people, go into rural environments, when we go the beach, or even under the waves to get our candids — if we visit the zoo, have animals as our primary subjects, if we knock on strangers’ doors, will we still find the street? This fall and winter Her Side of the Street goes “Everywhere,” see you there.
In our first installment we chat with Vermont photographer Tara Wray about her project photographing dogs in rural Vermont.

What draws you into a project about dogs in cars?
I just have a connection to animals, probably in a way that I don’t necessarily have with people, probably because I’m pretty shy, and I’d much rather approach a dog than a person. That’s not to say that I can’t talk to a person, I just find dogs much more engaging — I find their faces very honest immediately, and we just sort of feel an immediate connection.
I think sometimes the things that I see in the animals are very human qualities. Sometimes a loneliness or a kind of sadness or an anxiety, you know “Where is my person?”
Most of the series is shot near your home in Vermont?
Yes, it is called Barnard, and everybody’s spread out, so there’s a general store and a lake, and that’s sort of our town, about a thousand people.
With such a rural environment, does everyone know about you and this project? Do they say “ Here comes the dog lady!”?
They might say that, and I don’t know about it! But usually if they are doing that, they are people with dogs, and they understand that level of passion for animals. If they know me, it’s because they have one.
I would say I know people’s dogs better than I know them. People up here are just sort of going about their business, they are doing their thing, and respecting you doing your thing, and keeping to themselves. I mean everybody is very friendly, the neighbors are very supportive, and everybody shares apples and all that good stuff. I definitely know people in the community, but I don’t know that they know me, and that I’m taking pictures of their dogs, unless they come out of the general store and I’m standing there taking a picture of their dog.
What usually happens if they do find you standing there? Is there one particular instance you would share?
Usually people will just stop and tell me about their dogs, because people love their dogs. I guess it could be a little sketchy if you’re walking up to somebody’s open car window and putting a camera into it while their dog is in there! Some people might not like that, but I do remember once a couple years ago, some people approached me with “Hmmm, what are you doing in my car!” I said “ Oh, I noticed your dogs, they were beautiful, and I wanted to take their picture.”

So they opened up the car and put their three dogs into this little stroller. They started telling me how the dogs basically saved their lives, at a point in their lives when they were sick, they didn’t have much going, they were a little depressed, and these little dogs came into their lives, and they eventually gave them a reason to live! They sort of just poured it all out, you know, told me everything.
Have you ever found any other animals in cars?
One day I found a hatchback full of goats, I unfortunately only had my iPhone, so didn’t get the pictures I was hoping for, but I will never forget, it was a hatchback full of goats and kids, two little kids and three or four goats. The people came up, and I said “Wow!” They said “Yeah, we’re moving, and this is how we have to do it.”

“Rural street photography” takes away most of the people.
It forces you to look elsewhere, and that’s what I do. I’m connecting to the animals, and I’m sharing that, so it’s my personal connection, what I see in them, and what I feel like they’re giving to me. I feel like I’m able to capture that, sometimes.
I just shoot what I see. There are places nearby with downtowns, where there would be people. I live close to a town called Woodstock, Vermont — basically a postcard town, ridiculously beautiful — and people come in by the bus load. There is a ton of foot traffic, so there would be “more traditional” street photography opportunities there, but I guess that doesn’t quite appeal to me in the same way.

I think my work has a moodiness to it, which I guess I am drawn to, kind of an environmental sadness. Vermont in February is kind of like living on the moon — it’s intense, you sort of have to want to be here, if you don’t want to be here, you are going to be sort of miserable because it’s a challenge. It just is cold, coupled with the fact that everyone is pretty spread out, it’s rural, it can be very isolating, sometimes you can feel a little bit alone. So I think some of my work reflects that loneliness. But I think there is also a hopefulness in just connecting — whether it is with a person or an animal, or whatever it is — for me having the camera is my way of connecting to the bigger world, feeling more part of it.

One of your journalist projects is Lady Shooters, interviews with women photographers.
I want to be a champion of women, a supportive person for women who are making great work. The idea of being a collective of women who are doing something like what you are doing with your group, I think that’s very important.
It’s a challenge, especially being a working mom — another aspect that I struggle with, and I reach out to other women who are doing the same, and we’re constantly trying to find our footing. Not only as the “perfect moms,” but as somebody who is trying get paid the same amount of money to do the same amount of work — and to just do good work that is respected, regardless of our gender.
Tara Wray is a filmmaker, photographer, and journalist. You can find her series Doin’ Work, flash interviews with photographers on Huffington Post, and Lady Shooters, interviews with women photographers for BUST magazine. Follow along with more of her dog series on her Instagram.