Natural History is a new series exploring our peculiar relationship with animals, using images I have taken of the dioramas at New York’s Museum of Natural History.



I was entranced by these beautiful displays and respectful of the great skill that goes into their creation but I wanted to show how aloof we are from the natural world. We claim to love animals and yet we like them at a distance, we want to comprehend them on our own terms.



I was struck by how the idyllic scenes presented behind glass contrasted with the present reality of endangerment and destruction of natural habitats. In order to accentuate this detachment my original photographs have been digitally manipulated and re-presented as elegant, decorative images. I wanted to create a trophy, not dissimilar to the prized heads of a hunter, to show the desire to triumph over the natural world and display our spoils. Alice Walker observed:



'The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men'.



We are faced with the extinction of huge numbers of species, many as a result of destructive human behaviour. Despite their educational and aesthetic qualities, the dioramas could be seen as sentimental portals into a world we would like to believe in, yet one that we are destroying little by little every day.



The images in this series are meant as both a celebration and a caution. John Burroughs, the American Naturalist wrote:



'I seldom go into a natural history museum without feeling as if I were attending a funeral'.



We have to hope the work of the world’s conservationists can stem the tide of our indifference to the passing away.