Sable Antelope

>I made a curious discovery while looking at the exhibition of animal dioramas: the stuffed animals positioned before painted backdrops looked utterly fake, yet by taking a quick peek with one eye closed, all perspective vanished, and suddenly they looked very real. I had found a way to see the world as a camera does. > >--Hiroshi Sugimoto Hiroshi Sugimoto first encountered the elaborate animal dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History after moving to New York in 1974. Omitting the didactic materials surrounding each display, images in the series "Dioramas"--produced between 1975 and 1999--heighten the illusion that the animals were photographed in their natural habitats. Surely Sugimoto was aware of the incredible history the diorama, which includes a connection to the medium of photography. The stage designer Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, who later developed the daguerreotype photographic process, introduced the diorama in Paris in 1822.