Elaborate Photographic Specimen Boxes by Michael Mapes

By Emily Temple

May 3, 2012

Croton Falls, New York-based artist Michael Mapes, whose work we first spotted over at Colossal, creates fantastic photographic portraits presented as specimen boxes, dissecting photographs and then preserving each of their hundreds of parts, dropping them into vials, affixing them with insect pins, pressing them between magnifying plates for a gorgeous but slightly disturbing assemblage. The portraits make the viewer feel at once the scientific observer and the observed, both the mad scientist and the shattered subject. Click through to see some of our favorites of Mapes’ portraits, and then be sure to check out his website for even more of his work.

Photo credit: Michael Mapes