Imagining Fauna

Several years ago, Mary Frey was captured by the sad beauty of old, perhaps neglected taxidermy at the Springfield Science Museum.  In turn she captures that emotion on film with an ambrotype process that mimic the gentle fragility of the creatures themselves.  In her own words:

Photography invites us to pay attention. It describes with economy, precision and detail. It enables us to stare, scrutinize, and become voyeurs. Taxidermy allows us to do the same. Its complete replication of an animal’s stance, gesture and look provides us a way to study and comprehend its existence. Yet I find that these animals, often portrayed in suspended animation, seem simultaneously strange, ghostly and beautiful. Their gaze is both familiar and unknown. I intend this work to move beyond what is merely seen to the territory of the imagination, where what is remembered and known is transformed into something new.

Check out her website here + http://www.maryfrey.com/fauna/index.htm#title  to see more of her taxidermy works.