Past Exhibitions

Suspended Animation: Photographs by Rosamond Wolff Purcell

4 February–14 March 2003

"I am drawn to literary and historical associations that emanate from objects rather than to single definitions of them, and am attracted to metamorphoses achieved either by nature or by design," says photographer Rosamond Wolff Purcell. Suspended Animation, an exhibition of her photographs of biological specimens, mostly embryos, from medical and natural history museums has been organized to complement the college’s Weissman Center for Leadership’s spring programs on "The Political Embryo: Reconceiving Human Reproduction," the exhibition features images Purcell has studied for visual signs of life, of change and of transformation.

"Macabre yet serenely beautiful, [Purcell’s photographs] are like paintings Vermeer might have made after rummaging through a natural history museum’s basement," wrote Newsweek of her work. In fact, Purcell’s book Special Cases: Natural Anomalies and Historical Monsters was a Village Voice Book of the Year. She also wrote the award-winning Swift as a Shadow and, with Stephen Jay Gould, Crossing Over: Where Art and Science Meet. Purcell’s photographs are featured in A Long Look at Nature by Margaret Martin and DICE Deception, Fate and Rotten Luck by Ricky Jay. Her numerous volumes of photography and artistic wonder bring forth a cabinet of curiosities in a fascinating combination of art, science and philosophy.

For example, Purcell believes that embryos in a jar can suggest the model of addition as they increase in size and add visible parts. But she also sees the model of differentiation as embryos become more sharply defined with advancing age. In Purcell’s view, nature assisted by art acquiesces in these alternative readings. "Everyone sees what they want to see and what they are used to seeing," Purcell says. "I do not expect unilateral agreement from viewers about what these pictures mean….That’s OK by me….[M]y primary concern is to produce visual evidence."

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