Sacrifice
The preserved fetal pigs I photographed for Dissect spent 26 years in a cupboard, waiting to be unearthed by a zoology technician, who gave them to me. Each pig was individually sealed in a white, flowered plastic bag inside a flowered cardboard coffin. I wondered what I would find inside the bags after 26 years. What I found was that each animal was unique, some facet of individuality preserved along with its little body. I photographed most of the pigs the first time I saw them, surprised and awed as I opened the bags. One animal had begun to mummify, but the others were as fresh as the day they had died.
The Wasted Frogs in the dissecting pans are leftovers from university physiology labs. These, like thousands of frogs used in teaching biology, were collected in the wild, purchased from a biological supply company. Spared from death in the classroom, they were released into ponds on the roof of the science building to live out their lives in wet comfort. They couldn’t go back to nature because they were not from this area and would disrupt local biocommunities. But they inadvertantly jumped out of the raised ponds and couldn’t find the way back: the water was two feet overhead–an unprecedented location to a frog.
Operation is concerned with the use of standard research animals to teach the principles of mammalian physiology. In the other work in this series, the organisms themselves are present, either as photographs or as specimens. In Operation, there are no organisms to be seen, either in image or flesh. The nine photographs depict the arenas for surgery, the tools used in such operations, and devices employed to measure the physiological variables being studied in class. All is pristine and unsullied–as yet–by the actual procedures. Accompanying the pictures, stacks of used animal shipping boxes, their cargo gone, await disposal. The animals sacrificed are not represented, but their presence and fate are implied by the juxtaposition of the other two elements of the piece. What did the students learn in class?
Carol Selter
1997/2003