A Room Within A Room of Her Own

This work began with a diorama-like image of mine that sent me back to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, where I hadn’t visited since childhood.  Once there, I learned of the upcoming renovation of the Takin and Gorilla dioramas which had been sealed since their 1930s installation. In 2018 I began an extensive photographic project, documenting the entire process, an unlikely undertaking for me, but one that offered unexpected and ongoing fascination. What was particularly compelling was the way the resulting photographs, unmanipulated as they were, appeared as acts of the imagination, making the act of attention central to the project and enhancing my own notions regarding documentation. And while the developing project caused reflection on the original conservation/colonial impulses that inspired the dioramas’ production, as I continued to photograph the deconstruction then reconstruction of these sites, I discovered that the most arresting images were those that layered and complicated, even as they illuminated, the apparent narratives with which each of the dioramas was conceived.