Triops cancriformis (tadpole shrimp) is a rare crustacean and the British species is the oldest known animal species in the world. Triops has witnessed an industrial revolution, war and climate change but remains ignorant and unchanged in its own ecosystem. My work explores a fascination with this species as a potential survivor of climate change and how this contrasts with human attempts to survive the damage we have done to our planet. The photographs present Triops not as a primitive species but as a superior organism that has evolved to observe human behaviour, our creations and inevitable self-destruction. It emerges from its natural environment in a human guise to be bemused by our mono-cultured crops and alien technology. The viewer is asked to consider how our developed world might appear to a primitive species, the questions it might ask and whether its simplistic existence is the key to its survival, way beyond the rise and fall of humankind.
