Jo Whaley: Butterflies and Photography

Interesting photography work by Jo Whaley
Artist's website here: http://www.jowhaley.com/index.cfm?bhcp=1

From The New Yorker:
“The Theater of Insects” (Chronicle) is a cabinet of curiosities for your pocketbook. The photographer and avid lepidopterist Jo Whaley stages beetles, butterflies, and caterpillars in hand-crafted scenes. I can imagine these teensy stages piled on a dusty bookshelf, each featuring their own performance. As the insects’ wings blend into the background—old daguerrotypes, corroded metal, bits of paper and cardboard—the plot of unlikely coincidences unfolds.

Whaley is fascinated by melanism, the way that insects, like butterflies, evolve to blend into their surroundings, which in the industrialized world are often dreary and industrial. And yet, with graphic compositions and colors that illuminate the pages, the images seem playful, containing worlds in which beetles, metals, photographs, music sheets, and more make unlikely bedfellows. Like any good Wunderkrammer, the book aims for scientific display and stops somewhere near surreal folly.

posted by Wesley