encountering the foxes
My parents bought their house in Toronto's beaches area 43 years ago. It has a steep backyard with an undeveloped forest-like strip across the top and neighbouring properties, connected to a network of ravines in the area. Urban foxes, being nocturnal, seek safe resting places for the day, often in the sheltered yards of elderly people. Between 1999 and 2001, my parents' trimmed shrubs became a locus for them. On a sad and ominous note, most of the foxes that I photographed there - as many as nine at one time - have succumbed to the disease called sarcoptic mange. They are gone now, almost as quickly as they appeared, three years ago. The Urban Fox Project is a continuing exploration of their presence, and of the issues effecting foxes in downtown Toronto.
urban fox project
The Urban Fox Project draws on footage from my extensive archive of digital video of urban foxes, tracing peak population density in 1999-2000, through the decline in 2001 due to trapping and sarcoptic mange.
‘
Animal Movies’ and ‘fox : future’ were informed by the chapter ‘Looking at the Non-Human’ in the book ‘The Culture of Nature : North American Landscape from Disney to the Exxon Valdez’ by Alexander Wilson (1989). This chapter explores how animal movies and TV have impacted on ideas of nature.