We first saw Ted Sabarese's photography a few months back when a standout from his evolution series held down the cover of Gastronomica's Summer 2011 issue. There, a striking woman with huge luminescent eyes and a silvery gown sat poised to slice into a silvery fish with peepers the size of fifty cent pieces — her fishy doppelgänger. We're not icthyologists or anything, but is that a snapper we see before us? The rest of the series follows suit: people paired with (and preparing to eat) the fish that resemble them.

For those who like their analysis faster than a Filet-O-Fish, Sabarese has outlined evolution's intent:

With all the recent, fiery controversy between evolution, creationism, intelligent design, science, religion, the political left, right, etc., I thought it might be provocative to throw my visual two-cents into the ring. The images beg the question, is it really so difficult to believe we came out from the sea millions and millions of years ago?

While we wouldn't call these images the sort of “evidence” we could count on to dissuade wayward science teachers, they are creepy and whimsical, beautifully composed and arresting. Gazing off wistfully, fork hovering over a catfish, a hefty mustachioed man looks as if he might weep — perhaps because he's feasting on a distant cousin. We're also left with questions. Did Sabrese hold his auditions at a fish market? And which came first — the model or the mullet?

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