Wunderkabinet

At a friend’s house I saw this ‘wunderkabinet’ of creatures. It fascinated me on several levels. On the one hand this is just a glass box with an owl and a rabbit and some woodland background, but looked at another way, which is what was so interesting to me, it is similar to a photograph. Someone made this! They brought all the elements together, they put them in a frame, they charged the whole thing with their own sense of mystery, value, color, form, context, reality, all in a search for meaning or beauty.

Isn’t that what we all try to do? Put a frame around a moment of time and try and invest it with all our feelings for the precise fraction of a second when we saw or felt something! Often we are not completely certain what it is that emanates from our observation, but the call is clear to us; make this moment count!

So, too, in this glass box of wonder. The effort here, by a taxidermist, or a hobbyist, or someone who just wanted to preserve something they found beautiful, is extraordinary and invites both speculation and wonder. Isn’t that what photography does.