Like a Fox in the City

Greenfort’s paint­ings tell sto­ries of the fox: how it creeps through the city, across waste­lands and through back­yards. He looks cau­tious, but also sovereign—because the prox­im­i­ty between fox (or oth­er wild ani­mals) and humans has long been no longer a pecu­liar­i­ty, even in dense­ly built-up and inhab­it­ed cities. But the pho­tog­ra­ph­er does not only make the fox and its con­tem­po­rary habi­tats vis­i­ble with his works. Green­fort also illu­mi­nates larg­er ques­tions of ecol­o­gy, of the con­nec­tions between eco­nom­ic, social and cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­na. And so the images of the fox in the city speak not only of coex­is­tence, but also of an adap­ta­tion of the fox’s habi­tat, made nec­es­sary by the destruc­tion of or dis­place­ment from oth­er habi­tats due to mas­sive human inter­ven­tion. Tue Green­fort, Daim­ler­straße 38, Pho­to on alu­mini­um, 40×59 cm, 2001, Edi­tion 5 + 1 AP © Tue Green­fort and KÖNIG Galerie Berlin, Lon­don, Tokyo

An increas­ing num­ber of wild ani­mals are liv­ing in our cities. The diver­si­ty of species in urban agglom­er­a­tions is even greater than in the areas sur­round­ing them. The pho­to­graph­ic series by artist Tue Green­fort pro­pels this coex­is­tence of human and fox into plain sight. He points out that the abun­dant and grow­ing diver­si­ty of ani­mal life in cities con­fronts us with new challenges—because not every­one is hap­py about this cohab­i­ta­tion. As a result, plan­ning faces sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges. It must not only take increas­ing and more com­pre­hen­sive care of the diverse needs and desires of dif­fer­ent peo­ple but also those crea­tures with no voic­es of their own in urban devel­op­ment processes.


Project

Daim­ler­straße 38


Artist

Tue Green­fort


Year

2001


Loca­tion

Frank­furt, Germany

© Tue Green­fort and KÖNIG Galerie Berlin, Lon­don, Tokyo
© Tue Green­fort and KÖNIG Galerie Berlin, Lon­don, Tokyo
© Tue Green­fort and KÖNIG Galerie Berlin, Lon­don, Tokyo