Shortlist, Lares by Luca Rotondo

Lares is an ongoing project about our response to the death of our pets. I met several families who decided to keep the body of the animal they loved in their homes, embalmed, in the form of a skeleton, or in formalin. What may appear to be an anomaly is actually more widespread than might be imagined. In Roman civilisation Lares referred to the statues of the spirits of ancestors and protectors of home and family. Like those statues, dead animals are preserved in everyday places. And it's there that I wanted to set the family portraits.