7.5" x 10"
Paper, Pretty Pictures and Great Text
SWEDEN

READ ABOUT NATURE IN NATURE...

This book lends it's title from a series of Swedish nature documentaries. Images of nature dioramas present a beautiful mix of still-life painting and a dash of drama. The hare is caught in the midst of a jump, a snake stands coiled; nature as you didn't know you could see it. If you can't walk into nature you can look or read about it and think about being in nature. Produced by the independent publisher "Journal" in Sweden. The fascinating essay by Magnus Bärtås offers an analysis of early diorama production and the associated habit of catching, documenting and preserving nature. The majority of the images were taken at the Biological Museum in Stockholm, one of my all-time favorite museums, with paintings by Bruno Liljefors and taxidermy by Gustaf Kolthoff, a man who was known to have both a preserved and live owl in his studio, it is said visitors could not tell them apart. Bärtås uses the term sculptured sceneography for the work.