World of Disappearing, The Collective Memory of Wild Things 

World of Disappearing, The Collective Memory of Wild Things (2020–) operates as both documentation and transformation, using museum dioramas as a starting point to explore how we mythologize what we’re losing. The process involves photographing and  biologically processing  scenes from natural history museum dioramas to make  mythological “image memory objects”. 

The concept of “image memory objects” suggests these works function as both artifact and ritual, preserving not just the appearance of vanished species but the cultural process of their transformation into story. The biological processing aspect adds another layer, where scientific methodology becomes part of the artistic process of creating new mythologies.

The mosaic approach—dividing the image into squares that reveal underlying layers—is a practical way to show the effects of biological processing as a form of time travel. Rather than presenting a sequence of separate images, it compresses a visual time-lapse into a single composition. Each image often contains 2–3 overlapping time layers, where each “time layer” reflects the increasing entropy caused by the biological processes over days of development. Instead of asking viewers to piece together a timeline, the mosaic allows them to see the transformation directly through the spatial arrangement of the squares. Each square acts as a window into a different stage of the process.  The exposed seams are coated with earth and sand, the same material that is the catalyst of the biological processing on color negative film.