This is an extraordinary collection of ‘photographs’ of animals by German photographer Alfons Alt, this year’s winner of the European Publishers Award for Photography. Whilst the work is reminiscent of a medieval bestiary it is inescapably contemporary in its visual approach and content. Alt’s way of working is highly unusual – each animal is photographed as if they were having their portrait taken. These are ‘individuals’ not examples of a species. The photographs seem almost to be portrait paintings, an effect achieved by using one of the very early photographic printing techniques – Résino-pigmentype – a pigmentary, non-silver process based on the capacity of gelatine to harden in contact with the sun. This allows him to manipulate the colouration of the images so that each becomes a unique, one-off ‘picture.