 Colourful
birds, carefully arranged cats and monkeys, dioramas, dinosaurs and whales
-- this is the world of Animus. Berthold Daum's visionary photography leads
into the strange world of a museum's archives and exhibition areas. During
a time span of more than one year Berthold investigated exhibition halls,
specimen storage areas, and preparator work rooms of the Museum of Victoria. These photographs
reanimate the dead life to a new life.
David Smith's lyrical prose is perfectly suited to this photographic quest.
His deep insights into the nature of science and the science of nature are
paired with a poetic and evocative language:
-
The vertebra. Huge, and yet so reminiscent of our own. The transverse
process bears a facet in which slots the tubercle of a rib. The stout centrum,
separated from its neighbour by a slippery disc (can a whale slip a disc?)
supports the proscenium arch of pedicle-superior articular process-lamina-dorsal
spine.The archway serves dual roles: it both enshrines the impetus for movement
and permits it to occur. Within the spinal cord, the phone lines call the
shots; without, the muscles anchor to the plates. Nerves and muscles; both
jelly-sacs of electricity; the neurons signal the potential for action, if
only the muscles will respond. The field excites; calcium gates open; ATP
is hydrolysed; glucose oxidised; actin rachets myosin; the muscles shorten
(they can only shorten, as in rigor mortis, the fleeting strength of death)
and the beast begins to move. It swims. It finds another of its kind and
swims close. Blood flow redistributes; excitement builds, demands release;
the masculine protrusion links the two, embraced within the female for a
time. The system does them proud - affectionate nuzzling in one season leads
to nutritious nuzzling in the next, the calf's birth separated from its moment
of conception by a marathon swim in icy seas.
|
 David Smith
is an
award winning film-maker and zoologist. He wrote and presented David Smith's
Earthwatch for ABC TV, and is the author of Animal Tails,
Saving a Continent, and the novels Freeze Frame and Total
Containment.
David studied and has filmed wildlife across Australia, Europe, South and
North America, and India.
Berthold Daum is a professional
freelance photographer living in Melbourne. His industrial and architectural
images have won him awards and been purchased from public collections. Animus
is Berthold's second book. |
