by Michal Samama & Thalia Hoffman (2013)

Natural Reserve investigates the cultural link between femininity and nature by drawing on two typical encounters of object and gaze; that of the feminine nude model and the artist (painter/photographer), and that of animal life documented in its natural surrounding. But here the camera does not provide an external, as if neutral, gaze to an ongoing battle between a hunter and its pray; rather, both the camera and the body are the 'animals' trapped in a 'courtship dance' of sorts- seeking, lurking, chasing, capturing and avoiding capture. As the body moves slower and the camera gets closer, the object-the female body-becomes its own background, in which new realities are waiting to be revealed only to the camera’s gaze. The artificial devices of video photography, editing, and even directing, are not only the means of uncovering the hidden nature of the body, but become part of that very nature.