From the Vault of Art Shay: Monkey Business

\r\nI had thought to begin this week\'s vault with just one picture- one of my favorites. Here it is. As you can see it lives up to its Daiter Gallery title: \<em\>Monkey Descending from 12 Men\<\/em\>. I\'ve always thought of monkeys reversing the Darwinian trope that we descended from them, ever since I was invited by the Brookfield Zoo to document their annual one day task: getting the animals off their massive rock island habitat and into warmer winter quarters. Sheep, deer, mountain goats, monkeys. Most of the four footers took their relocation in stride but the monkeys, who had adapted nicely to Autumn in Chicago, persisted in eluding their would-be catchers in the wry atmosphere of hide and seek that evolves every year at this rite of passage, or in the simian case, pissage. \"Up ours,\" say the monkeys.

In Highland Park of all places, in a rented store, these racing monkeys chained to their cars, were exploited\r\nwith rewards of bananas, They simulated human racing drivers on Indy-style miniatures running on tracks. Disgusting but, as so many negative images, making for good pictures. This series is very popular with some of my collectors.

Inter-species relationships are not yet a Chicago issue but, like sex for sport, it has begun to rear its head in Los Angeles. Here a mixed-sex couple who share the same pad patiently wait on line for a good seat or seats. As usual, blondes are at the head of the social vanguard. They share a joint address on Facebook.

Family life and values amongst simians is surprisingly similar to that of elected officials, Supreme Court justices or other social arbiters. Aside from also communicating in non-committal grunts, monkeys also conduct their business with secret signs and portents. All kinds of behavior is tolerated if not encouraged. The support of both parents is always a plus and if the mother doesn\'t exactly stand behind her mate, when she perceives a camera, she stays close enough to make a difference by a show of solidarity, no matter what she feels inside.

The picture of a monkey leaving freedom to re-enter her cage came on another day. I was ambulating amongst the cages with my five kids when we saw the above! Harmon sought out a keeper and learned that the bonnet monkey could live either outside or inside the cage until he/she was a year old- and the head became too big to pass through the bars in either direction. Thus they were faced with a choice: Go on living outside the cage and be prey to cats and dogs and other free lance interlopers at the Zoo---OR wriggle in one last time and partake of benefits like easy sex, water, food and medical care- Keepercare.\r\nNelson Algren gave a print of this picture to Simone de Beauvoir as a simulacrum of her life with his rival for her afflictions: Sartre. It was a couple of years before Madame\'s books began to make money, so she was not amused to have her dependence tweaked by her resident tweaker. But Sartre, according to Nelson, loved it and had it on his apartment wall for a while. \"Yes,\" he would joke, \"It\'s Simone living well off me.\" The monkey opting for captivity and its perks. Some classy monkey!\r\n

A few years on, while photographing Jessica Lange for a Time story on her King Kong sequel, Jessica cooperated as I imitated King Kong carrying her off. My caption concluded: \"For a glorious moment I was King Kong absconding with a beautiful American blonde. It didn\'t matter that a few scenes later I\'d be machine-gunned atop the Empire State Building- (I boasted to friends my father-in-law Morris had prudently left a small share of stock in the building to my wife Florence) Thus I had made off with a real lady fair who punctuated her peals of laughter bouncing across her Minnesota summer place with a phrase from the ultimately great actress I\'ll remember to my dying day: \"I love you King Kong.\"