“I have spent the last two years working on a book project set in the basement and archives of The Natural History Museum in Vienna, finally the book is finished! 377 black and white images, one poem, ‘Alphabet’ by the Danish poet Inger Christensen, 592 pages, and 2.5 Kilo. I think it’s safe to say it’s my biggest book yet…but alas, no release party and no champagne this time. If you would like to order a copy of the book it is available through Fotohof (http://www.fotohof.net/content.php?id=29) or if you are in Berlin you can have a look at it and get a copy at Motto Books (http://www.mottodistribution.com/shop/) in the Skalitzer Strasse…” —Nadja Bournonville
The book is also available in New York City at McNally Jackson (#52 Prince St. NY, NY 10012 and #76 N 4th St Unit G, (Williamsburg) Brooklyn, NY 11249).
A worm crossed the street
Author: Nadja Bournonville
Language: Swe/Eng/Ger/Dan.
Format: 28,5 x 21 cm, 592 pages
ISBN: 978-3-903334-10-6
Edition: 300
FOTOHOF edition Bd./vol. 310
With ‘A worm crossed the street’, Nadja Bournonville takes us into the archive of Vienna’s Natural History Museum, the shelves of which are filled with animals transformed into dermoplastic exhibits, skeletons and wet preparations. These archived animals are a shadow not only of their former selves, but sometimes of their entire species. How does our relationship to the specimens at the museum as representatives of their species change in an age of declining biodiversity? With each species that becomes extinct, its genetic information is irrevocably lost, and the process of disappearance is irreversible. Preservation, photographs, and digital reanimation cannot halt that process, but merely accompany it, and follow the traces of that which has disappeared. The 377 black-and-white photographs in the book also reference Inger Christensen’s ever important poem Alphabet, laid out in accordance with the Fibonacci sequence, with excerpts here accompanying the photographs.
