Speculative Taxidermy

118DIORAMAS

and dispersed. The presumed veridicality of the photographic image,
which in semiotic terms is called indexicality, constituted only one of the
many incarnations of the desire to possess natural objects—dioramas
were the other. Photography’s effect on the emergence of natural his-
tory dioramas was indeed defining. A literalist approach to recreating a
fragment of wilderness led to a pre-Raphaelite obsessiveness devoted to
the painstaking production of the exact spot and surroundings in which
the animals were found and killed.^28 However, this approach was short-
lived, and as Haraway’s analysis of Carl Akeley’s taxidermy aptly demon-
strates, the ethical objectivity of photography was quickly replaced by
the construction of a “morality play on the stage of nature.”^29

SHOOTING ANIMALS: TAXIDERMY, DIORAMAS,

AND PHOTOGRAPHY

By the 1860s, through the dissemination of prints and publications, the
newly institutionalized optic of natural history entered a normative
phase—it set a new register of realism. By the end of the nineteenth century,
mechanical objectivity became the standard of scientific representation—
the evidential, rigorist, epistemic value of photography constructed truth
in science. This notion was so widespread that wildlife photographer Osa
Johnson claimed in his 1923 prospectus to the American Museum that
“the camera cannot be deceived... [and therefore it has] enormous sci-
entific value.”^30 However, despite photography’s ability to produce mimetic
material exactitude, its adoption as an aid in the making of taxidermy
was very controversial.^31
In reference to mounting animal skins, Montagu Browne, curator of
the Leicester Corporation Museum and Art Gallery, claimed that an am-
ateurish approach to photography could constitute “a great mistake, es-
pecially if the ubiquitous ‘Kodaker’ is not an artist.”^32 Browne warned of
the startled and frightened look animals may reveal if the photographer
is “anxious to take a ‘snap shot.’ ”^33 The use of the term snapshot is of par-
ticular interest here because it reveals a key contradiction within Browne’s
own argument. His fear that photography may produce the image of an
awkward animal betrays the essential selectivity implied by the so-called