STEVEN HIRSCH: “I WILL NOT BUG OUT ON BUGS”

A PHOTOGRAPHER RESPONDS TO NEW YORK CITY’S CURRENT EFFORT TO KILL THE SPOTTED LANTERNFLY

by Steven Hirsch

I love bugs.

The praying mantis is perhaps my favorite. Caterpillars are a close second. Cocoons are so cool.

As a child, I could hardly wait to head out with my family to the countryside to find as many insects as I could. Of course, I hated mosquitoes. Who doesn’t?

Photograph by Steven Hirsch of a dead spotted lanternfly (Latin taxonomic name: lycorma delicatula) from his recent series of images of these insects, which he has found lying squashed and dead in streets and on sidewalks in New York City. Photo courtesy of the artist

Bugs seem like miniature dinosaurs to me. Everything about them is so symmetrical. Some of them — I’m thinking of certain hard-shelled beetles — look like little tanks as they move along slowly in their miniature world. They look prehistoric and they probably are.