STUFFED ANIMALS

"Taxidermy is deeply marked by human longing," revealing our complex relationship with nature (The Breathless Zoo: Taxidermy and the Cultures of Longing). My work, photographing taxidermied animals, navigates this intricate relationship, exploring paradoxes of representation and reality and echoing Hiroshi Sugimoto's series, which blurs boundaries between authenticity and illusion. While a tool of objective documentation, the camera also constructs subjective realities, prompting a dialogue between tangible taxidermied subjects and the subjective truth through my lens. My series invites viewers to ponder our paradoxical relationship with nature, exploring themes of life, death, and the uncanny while challenging perceptions of truth in photography and our place within the natural world.

Rachel Poliquin, The Breathless Zoo: Taxidermy and the Cultures of Longing. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012.