It is not unusual for artists to adapt found photographs from the natural world in their work. But it is something out of the ordinary when this develops into the pictorial biography of an ape.

Cor Dera did not only do research at Berlin Zoo for his work produced at the Künstlerhaus. He was also given access to the comprehensive picture archive owned by Raimon Opitz, the man responsible for the apes.

Dera follows his own method of creating a balance between the observation of nature and artistic construction; in his project, he focuses on one particular natural actress, the female gorilla “Dufte”. Dera is showing a selection of c. 120 pictures which he chose from Raimon Opitz’ collection after detailed discussion, and then arranged in his own digital archive. After this, the artist processed the pictures and used them to produce a series of laser prints in three different sizes.