Rosamond Purcell’s States of Decay

Slate’s Amanda Schaffer has put together a wonderful slideshow essay on the work of one of our favorite photographers, Rosamond Purcell. Writes Schaffer:
Purcell treats old objects with a sense of wonder. Her aesthetic has sometimes been described as pre-Enlightenment. Yet the work is far more contemporary than it first appears. The obsessive focus on selecting, classifying, and repurposing—the culling of favorites from other peoples’ favorites—makes it like some ultracool group projects on the Web… Purcell’s work isn’t speedy, and it doesn’t get e-mailed around the world (not yet, anyway). But she also wrestles with how to structure and restructure image and information in the face of overwhelming abundance. Her bats and beetles are nudging up against the future.
The image above is “Mole Skins From the Collection of van Heurn,” from Finders, Keepers: Eight Collectors, by Purcell and Stephen Jay Gould. Purcell’s new book, Bookworm, has just been published. Her work can also be seen in this month’s National Geographic.
* More on Purcell’s reconstruction of Ole Worm’s museum.
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