2019-2020
While photographing at the American Museum of Natural History, I felt an awe that I’ve felt since visiting the museum as a kid. The dioramas seem as though you could fall into them, and the animal specimens seem alive—in one image, a primate puts an arm around another and the gesture is tender, if implausible.
I was drawn in to the drama in the display cases—the staging of knowledge. Like photography, the museum presents a visual reality that is at once exactly described and woefully untrue. And like photography, museums have historically been used to express power and claim dominion.
At their best, museums and photographs can create space to reflect and to ask questions.