Backpack
Sling your whole day onto your back with this praying mantis backpack and go with your arms free: class, the bus, the gig. On the front it carries Bruno, a mantis in a lime-green jacket, sound engineer from Marseille. From my Animal Kinhood series, quiet and alert to everything.
Mantis religiosa
Good sound is invisible. If the audience notices me, something's gone wrong.
Meadows, Mediterranean scrubland, field edges and sunny peri-urban zones from southern Europe to northern Africa and western Asia; successfully introduced to North America since 1899.
Bruno has a gesture he repeats without noticing: he touches his wrists when he thinks, as if checking they're still there, every time he's waiting for a room to go quiet or for an idea to finish settling. It's not in the portrait; it's a tic, the kind that gives a person away. First the wrists, then the calm. It's his way of taking a breath before deciding what to change.
A fact about the species that also doesn't show up in the image: the mantis gets its name from the folded posture it holds its front legs in, like someone praying or waiting. Bruno waits the same way: still, alert, until he knows exactly what to touch. A backpack inherits that way of moving through the world: you carry what matters and keep going, arms free. It works well for class, travel or work; who Bruno is and what he carries is in his biography.
