Wax Bodies Nº187, 2007 15 x 18"

* * *

Wax Bodies 2006-2008

In the summer of 2006, I began photographing wax anatomical models in a small museum in Florence known as “La Specola”–The Royal Museum of Physics and Natural History born at the height of the Enlightenment. The so-called ‘Phantom Bodies’ were created to reveal new knowledge of the body, anatomy, childbirth and disease. I also photographed the collection of models at the Josephinum in Vienna (once the Military Surgical-Medical Academy in the 1780’s). These Viennese models were made in Florence at “La Specola.” The two collections are, in theory, identical. Yet, their differences are intriguing --the Italian women have olive complexions and lush brown hair, while the Viennese are pale, blue-eyed and blond, and wear golden circlets. In Wax Bodies I came to see the medium of photography as an analogue to Enlightenment concepts of seeing and understanding the world. Both have the look of truth, with a stranger fiction not far beneath the surface.