Photo: Tableau Vivant #63 ©Alexandra Murphy
Animal Afterlives: a photography exhibition on taxidermy by Alexandra Murphy
Natural history museums display and store preserved animals in such a way that they, at first glance, appear to be living, but in reality they are lifeless and fixed in position. When these specimens are photographed, their stillness becomes further frozen in time. Alexandra Murphy has photographed different taxidermy specimen collections in UK and US museums, in an exploration of the photograph’s relationship with preservation, representation, life and death, past and present.
The works in the exhibition explore a range of different photographic methods and materials from retouched digital photographs, prints embedded in resin and nineteenth-century photographic processes to produce the salted paper print and carte-de-visite albumen print.
The artwork will be displayed throughout the Museum. Entry to the Museum, including the exhibition is free. Please book a ticket https://www.museum.zoo.cam.ac.uk/visit-us
About the artist
Alexandra Murphy has been researching the relationship between photography and taxidermy in museums since 2007. She has an exploratory approach to her photographic practice, incorporating a range of mixed media across digital and wet print processes. Alexandra's work can be viewed on her website: www.acm-photo.com.
