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The Specimens series is an ongoing still life photography
project that references collections of natural science specimens in
order to explore themes of beauty, transience, life and death. As an
artist with a reverent curiosity about the natural world, I am a perpetual
collector of leaves, pods, shells, feathers, bones and other commonplace
wonders. Yet unlike a scientist who determines a precise identification
for each specimen, I find that the truth of my subjects is ephemeral
and will not stay pinned where meaning is clear. With each passing moment,
life flutters, light shifts, perception alters and an image vanishes.
In the remains of the photograph I find only contradictions: fragility
and endurance, beauty and decay, chance and destiny.
With these contradictions at heart, I use a camera
to preserve each specimen in a delicate framework constructed solely
of natural light and shadow, often labeled with enigmatic fragments
of text, script, or musical notation. In the process, the mundane reality
of each specimen undergoes a quiet metamorphosis as it is suspended
in an ambiguous, metaphorical realm. Here, outside of time, place, and
scale, science and art meet across blurred boundaries to measure the
immeasurable: the inevitability of loss and the transcendence of beauty.
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