Speculative Taxidermy

Guns have metamorphosed into cameras in this earnest comedy, the

ecology safari, because nature has ceased to be what it had always been—

what people needed protection from. Now nature—tamed, endangered,

mortal—needs to be protected from people. When we are afraid we shoot.

But when we are nostalgic, we take pictures.

—SUSAN SONTAG, ON PHOTOGRAPHY

Photographs of stuffed animals... represent a kind of double mimesis

and reinforce the shared ways in which photography and taxidermy are

manifestations of a desire to possess and control nature.

—JAMES R. RYAN, “HUNTING WITH THE CAMERA: PHOTOGRAPHY,

WILDLIFE AND COLONIALISM IN AFRICA”

WHAT I S S PEC U L ATIV E TA XI D ER M Y?

Through the first three chapters, taxidermy emerged as the sedimenta-
tion of intertwining histories of affirmative and ideologically charged
representations in which artistic media, materialities, and their affiliation
to power played pivotal roles. Taxidermy’s materialization was shaped by
positivistic, epistemic spatializations in which the absolute sovereignty of

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THE END OF THE DAYDREAM

Taxidermy and Photography