Extant Erosions, 2025

MFA thesis catalog
submitted to the University of New Mexico

First edition, self-published
Designed by Nicole Lavelle
Printed by Starline Printing, Albuquerque, NM

62 plates, printed on uncoated matte paper, metal coil-bound

Meandering through archived materials stored in various natural history collections such as glass slides, taxidermy, preserved animals, and minerals, Extant Species poises the natural history museum as a prism through which we refract our human understandings of nature, land, and time. I examine the natural history institution as an important space for the general public to encounter and remember the existence of animals, but also an insufficient and even perverse gesture to “save”. 

The book represents five years of photographing in natural history museum collections. The photographs include still lifes composed with taxidermy and animal specimens, images of collection facilities, and a scanned archive of 100-year-old glass lantern slides which are printed on vellum.