This series of photos attempts to capture the surprising and often bizarre creatures that populate the display cases of museums of natural history. The subjects of these photos are the vestiges of natural science collections that go back to the 18th and 19th centuries; they are the result of an era of exploration that brought many wondrous specimens to the public’s attention. The photos are presented as portraits, and reworked to accentuate the strangeness of these creatures. The skulls, skeletons and stuffed animals, with their frozen horrified stares, tell us as much about the society of that era and its relationship to nature, as they do about the science. They are witnesses to an era when nature was strange and frightening, something to be controlled, classified, and catalogued.
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