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gary
duehr
photography Gary
Duehr in the field
Taken in natural history museums, including the Field Museum in Chicago and the American Museum of Natural History in New York, these photographs make close contact with the animals, while including all the context of the displays: glass cages, neon tubes, pedagogical labels. It is as if the natural history dioramas are standing in for an overly mediated world, where instinct is frozen in place and categorized. Yet even as the artificiality is revealed, a kind of identification maintains its grip. An antelope noses the glass. A zebra peers out from a thicket. A swan bends its neck beside its own label. The creatures, for the most part, appear content, concentrated, literally in their element. While the shadows of onlookers lurk at the edges, hurried and distracted. It's unclear whether the animals or humans are truly imprisoned, on which side of the glass lies a dys- or utopia.
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