“Man gave names to all the animals”, Bob Dylan reminds us in a song, with an eye on the Bible. Giving a name, in occidental Christian culture, means dominating, exercising paternal authority, owning, deciding fate. Man names animals because they are different and inferior, and decides about their life, their possible usefulness and their death.

But beyond physical dominance – which also happens between animals – an even more significant and much more complex way in which man takes possession of animals and of everything else in the world, whether from nature or from culture, is the activity of classification, which is immediately linked to those of conservation and the making of museums: these activities have been, and remain, the tools and institutions of the human aptitude to dominate the world.

A important book by Georges Perec, entitled Penser/classer, offers a critical and subtly ironic interpretation of the problem – practically impossible for the human mind to resolve – of comprehending the world (in the etymological sense of taking, possessing – but also in the sense of finding a meaning for things and for existence itself) through categories to permit logical, all-inclusive and, in the end, reassuring order. Perec’s writing reveals, step by step, how the operation of classification is simply a disconcerting work of fiction conducted by man through imagination, creative construction, always open, incomplete, and always subject to discussion. Strong and structured, yet weak at the same time.

Natural History, uses the spaces of a small museum of Natural History as a setting for a grouping of fictional accounts that unfold on various levels. On the one hand, there is the fiction that is always staged by a museum of this type, through small, sometimes naïve or clumsy, but always fascinating depictions, arrangements, compositions, the use of display cases, dioramas, artificial spaces.

On the other, there is the instance of minimal scenes that happen inside the museum, of objects that somehow appear there, though they may seem extraneous and out of place. On another level, there is the fiction generated by the photograph itself, also through reflections, overlaps and, of course, cropping and the choice of vantage points. So a goat that certainly knows many things gazes at us from inside the photo with its little eyes, seeming to have entered the world only to be photographed and to look at us. But if we raise our gaze we notice that a bottle of wine and some glasses have been mysteriously placed on top of her display case.

A dog – a living one – sits on the checked floor and curiously observes many stuffed owls in a display, individuals and couples. We are tempted to say that the owls are also curiously observing the dog, wondering what it is doing there in the museum.

The dark head of a hippo smiles from the corner of a photograph, looking at various big mammals, each closed in its own case, its new spare and insufficient habitat, on the same inappropriate checked floor. But on the floor we see a live cat, making itself at home, and beyond a door we can see a washing machine.

A display case contains a scene featuring ostriches, large and small, or still in the eggshell. In the background different birds hold different poses, in profile, motionless, eternal at this point. But below the display case of the ostriches we see a few pairs of shoes. We don’t know to whom they belong or why they are lined up there in a row.

Other images of birds repeat and are overlaid on images of the world outside the museum. It is impossible to understand if these are real scenes, installations or the result of digital processing.

Common household objects and living pets positioned here and there in the impressive exhibits of a small Museum of Natural History make us think of the home, of everyday life, of the little things we all do, the weaknesses of life. But what’s going on? Has the photographer brought objects and animals here, to stage these tableaux? Or are we looking at evidence of a simple, homey way of running and experiencing a museum, where the guards make themselves at home? Who are the inhabitants of the museum?

This, in the end, is photography: a way of attributing an effect of reality to a given situation, be it possible or impossible – if there is such a thing as an impossible situation. And what is reality, that reassuring term we often use to understand and justify things, remains a mystery.

Roberta Valtorta