LOST SOULS
In the early 18th century, Peter the Great established the first museum in Russia on the banks of the Neva River in St. Petersburg. As a Cabinet of Wonder and Curiosities, this Kunstkamera was intended as a place for educative contemplation of manmade and natural phenomena, a place that would “represent the world as it was instead of solely how we wished it to be.” Central to exhibition was a collection, procured, by the Tsar himself, from the Dutch anatomist Frederick Ruysch, of preserved, stillborn humans and animals, “anomalies” that were incompatible with life, tragic and confounding. The Church at the time could not fathom “Creator’s unsuccessful attempts at human life” on display in the collection, and declared their souls, literally, “lost”: they could not go to heaven, hell or even limbo.
Nearly three centuries later, Lena Herzog photographed the anomalous beings in the Kunstkamera and many other Curiosity Cabinets (Wunderkammern or Kunstkammern) around the world. The day Herzog first encountered the collection in St. Petersburg, she saw the reflected light from the Neva river cast the beings in a ghostly, silver glow, allowing the resulting, haunting images to ask anew centuries-long questions about boundaries, loss, preservation, and the soul. Later, Herzog searched for ways to preserve that first impression in her photographs.
