DIORAMAS121cunningly said that dioramas should offer a “peep-hole in the jungle,”
aptly reassessing the spatial conceptions of division, exclusion, and sur-
veillance at play in natural history tableaux.^38 The outstanding realist
quality of Akeley’s mounts was primarily attributed to his skills as an
academically trained sculptor and painter. He became, in 1890, the first to
complete a habitat diorama in the United States, and claims that Akeley
had successfully elevated taxidermy to high art status were published in
1927 by Scientific Monthly, among others.^39
In opposition to Browne, ethnographer Robert Wilson Shufeldt was in
favor of the use of photography for the crafting of taxidermy and dioramas.
In “Scientific Taxidermy for Museums,” he praised the optical tool as an
extension of the unaided eye, “for the camera can secure subjects that... the
pencil can never give,” he wrote.^40 However, as seen, to Browne the problem
clearly was an ontological one: he believed that taxidermy should be con-
sidered high art and that the adoption of photographic tools constituted
falseness in the theory and practice of taxidermy itself.^41 The contradiction
underlying Browne’s argument thus becomes overt: although arguing in
favor of a more lifelike taxidermy, he effectively advocated an emphasis
on deliberate representational construction, as opposed to the ethical-epis-
temic mechanical objectivity expected of photography. Browne’s claims
bring representational issues related to the notion of realism to the fore.
Haraway’s main argument in “Teddy Bear Patriarchy” substantially
revolved around realism and its intricate role in the representation of
nature. Although her positioning of taxidermy as suspended between
photography and sculpture is reasonably evident, Haraway did not consider
the productive potential of an analysis of the artistic discourses underly-
ing the emergence of taxidermy itself.^42 Thus she claimed that “realistic art
at its most deeply magical issues in revelation.”^43 But Haraway’s conception
of realism appears to be predominantly informed by anthropological
and scientific paradigms and is only loosely linked to artistic discourses:
in her conceit realism figures as intertwined with biological sciences, or-
ganicism, and eugenics,^44 whereas in its more explicit representational
value, realism connotes “an aesthetics proper to an anxiety about deca-
dence.”^45 Although Haraway is indeed right, her conception of realism
overlooks one of the most important and culturally defining forms of
realistic representation: that of classical art.
It is worth remembering that throughout its early stages, photography
shaped its representational lexicon and syntax through a series of more