Family Genus Species

Family Genus Species, Jeff Whetstone’s first monograph, is about growing up loving animals and negotiating man. Grounded in the southern Appalachian Mountains, the book unfolds through Whetstone’s black-and-white photographs and three short stories, bringing together his work as both an artist and a writer.

The title invokes Linnaean taxonomy, a system for classifying living things. The book draws on this order to consider the shifting relationships among people, animals, and the land.

Written with close observation and flashes of dark humor, the stories present animals and plants as sources of fascination, refuge, and uncertainty—and as a language for experiences the characters’ struggle to understand or express directly. A harmless animal can feel deadly; a creature believed to be dangerous may prove vulnerable;
a plant’s scientific name can carry the memory of the person who first revealed it. Field guides, family lore, religious belief, and direct experience do not always agree, making what is known, imagined, or inherited difficult to separate.

Rendered in a rich, dark tonal range, the photographs move between intimate acts and communal rituals, human figures and animal specimens, natural growth and altered landscapes. Animals appear not only as living presences but as bodies that are handled, hunted, collected, or arranged for study. People are immersed in their surroundings through play and movement, while the land’s dense vegetation appears poised to absorb their imprint.

Together, the photographs and stories portray human life as part of—not apart from—the natural world it seeks to describe and order.