Monkey Series by Thomas Holmes Durand

Thomas Holmes Durand is a photographer with a striking series of Sock Monkey photographs Number I-VI. You can view the images here. From nostagic to haunting, the pictures are memorable. Why Sock Monkeys? Only the artist can express his artistic motivation:

"The sock monkey doll became a subject of my photography shortly after I became sober. At the time, these handmade, depression era, dolls were the perfect figures to express the seemingly never-ending, raw emotions I was experiencing at the time. As a friend of mine said trying to explain the monkey thing to a friend, ”He took the monkey off his back and put it in front of the camera.” This quote does seem fitting for some of the series and reminds me of the monkey in the self-portrait images, a previous series. Several years back, I began making the dolls myself, experimenting with wire armatures in order that the monkeys could hold positions in a more animated way than their original floppy counterparts."

Sock Monkeys have been captured on film before by Arne Svenson and Ron Warren in "Sock Monkeys (200 out of 1,863)" Whereas Svenson chose to humanize the Sock Monkeys as regal in his head to shoulder portraits, Durans's work is quite emotional and spiritual as seen by the photographer. His collection represents a intense body of art.