From a teacup piglet to a hoary pig, from a menacing owlet to a magnificent bird – Gerrard Gethings’ animal portraits show there’s grace at every age
They say not to work with babies or animals, but the photographer Gerrard Gethings chose to combine the two for his latest project, a series of portraits of young animals alongside their adult counterparts.
Baby Animal Match was conceived as a memory card game, in which players are asked to pair duckling with duck, owlet with owl, hoglet with hedgehog, piglet and pig – and so on, through 44 combinations. These fluffy, tousled, bug-eyed babies are, inevitably, adorable. But not always in obvious ways. “There is a universal cuteness,” Gethings says. “But that wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. The baby racing pigeon, for example – that goes through an incredible transformation from an awful yellow hairy squab to a beautiful iridescent bird that can fly 100 miles an hour.”
