| I went for a stroll with my camera earlier today, which is a usual activity for me. Walking aimlessly and looking for subjects to photograph, I came across an unusual mound of dirt that caught my attention. It was when I took a closer look that I discovered that this mound was in fact a decaying carcass of a dog. It was already half covered in rubble and trash. Its decaying had exposed its rib cage and made its face hardly recognizable. An animal dying, rotting, and eventually returning to the earth is a very natural process, a process that every living organism must go through and accept. But there was something that was very disturbing to me about this sight. | 
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Jimi Franklin
Jimi Franklin, Wednesday, March 12th #2, 2008. Courtesy of the artist.I went for a stroll with my camera earlier today, which is a usual activity for me. Walking aimlessly and looking for subjects to photograph, I came across an unusual mound of dirt that caught my attention. It was when I took a closer look that I discovered that this mound was in fact a decaying carcass of a dog. It was already half covered in rubble and trash. Its decaying had exposed its rib cage and made its face hardly recognizable.
An animal dying, rotting, and eventually returning to the earth is a very natural process, a process that every living organism must go through and accept. But there was something that was very disturbing to me about this sight. The fact that this dog was lying next to the sidewalk amongst litter with cars speeding by three feet away was anything but natural to me. It was not nature that caused this animal’s destruction. It was we who had done this. A species created by man dying and decaying in man’s environment. Would this scene have seemed so tragic if it was a wild bird deteriorating in a remote forest?
We should ask ourselves, "What would our lives be like if we allowed ourselves to be confined by the rules given to us by nature?" Would there be so much tragedy if we were not constantly trying to bend the rules and elude the restrictions put onto us by the universe? We have a sense of responsibility for the outcome, because we have created the reasons that caused it. We are obliged to the dog, but can accept the fate of the bird because it was not our doing.
My work paints a picture of a domain where man is confined to these laws of nature. A place where we must learn to live with it instead of overpowering it, as a part of it and not as its controller. These photographs are a depiction of the views, thoughts, and experiences of one who lives this life, as well as what I perceive to be an ideal world.
