Dissections
A central irony in traditional biological science is this: in order to investigate life you have to study the dead. I became a botanist, in part to avoid the killing and formalin of zoology. Nevertheless, while exploring my school’s biology labs I became fascinated by the violated remains of dead animals preserved for science. The specimens I photographed for Dissections were sectioned, injected, labeled, and mounted in plastic coffins of embalming fluid. The divided photographs mimic this process. In them, the animals are enlarged to human scale. We are confronted by the casualities of our search for knowledge, artifacts created from other living beings.
Carol Selter
1992/2001