A show based on Levon Biss’s work that is opening at the American Museum of Natural History in June will spotlight insect decline, displaying insects that are extinct or severely threatened. Credit…Levon Biss.
Excerpt from this story from the
New York Times:
For most people, insects are an annoyance — sometimes, a frightening one. They are creatures to be smacked off an arm, stomped with a foot or, in the extreme, obliterated with pesticides.
But Levon Biss, a macrophotographer who shoots extreme close-ups of very small subjects, and curators and scientists at the American Museum of Natural History see the insect world in a radically different way: essential to life on earth, endangered and — in too many cases — headed for extinction.
A show opening in June, based on Mr. Biss’s work, will highlight 40 insects, some of which are already extinct and others that are considered imperiled, including some that are being raised in labs so they can be returned to the wild. Among those making an appearance: the Monarch butterfly, the nine-spotted ladybug, the Puritan tiger beetle, the Hawaiian hammer-headed fruit fly, the Mt. Hermon June beetle and the San Joaquin flower-loving fly. Most of the models for Mr. Biss’s photos have been selected from more than 20 million specimens that are part of the museum’s archives.
Mr. Biss’s camera shows them in an entirely new way, using a technique that magnifies the tiny details of their minuscule beauty to enormous proportions. For now, the exhibition, with photographs as large as 54 inches by 96 inches, will be housed in the museum’s Akeley Gallery and the adjacent East Galleria. Mr. Biss, who is also the author of “Microsculpture: Portraits of Insects,” has had his work displayed in an array of museums in Houston, Copenhagen and beyond.
“People usually come here to see all the creatures they love; the elephants, the dinosaurs, the blue whale,” said Lauri Halderman, the museum’s vice president for exhibition. “We had to think differently about doing an exhibition about insects. They’re not charismatic and they’re always in the wrong place, like inside our apartments.
“The exhibition needs to be beautiful in order for people to care,” she added. “Most of us have never seen insects presented like this. Levon’s photos are beautiful, bizarre and so intricately detailed in ways that most of us just never imagined.”
