The Breathless zoo:
Taxidermy and the Cultures of Longing
Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012
From sixteenth-century cabinets of wonders to contemporary animal art, The Breathless Zoo: Taxidermy and the Culture of Longing examines the cultural and poetic history of taxidermy.
Preserving dead animals in lively postures is a strange and unusual human act. Why would anyone desire to do such a thing? The Breathless Zoo suggests taxidermy is entwined with the enduring human longing to find meaning within the natural world. From the longing to preserve nature's wonders to the burning desire to immortalize a kill, taxidermy is always a haunted storyteller that always reflects what we desire the most.
The Breathless Zoo: Taxidermy and the Cultures of Longing
A book video by Michael Mills © 2012 Watch on vimeo here +
REVIEWS
The Breathless Zoo was reviewed or featured in:
LA Review of Books | ISIS | The Stranger | The Chicago Tribune | Humanalia | Maisonneuve | The Brain Scoop | Collectors Weekly | This is our Fauna | The New York Times | Cool Hunting | Make Magazine | Nuvo Magazine | NW Book Lovers | Powell’s | Time Out New York | Art Libraries Society of North America Reviews | Configurations
Interviews available on podcast:
Inside Science, BBC Radio 4 Listen here +
The Sunday Edition with Michael Enright, CBC Radio 1
Listen here +
The Colin McEnroe Show, WNPR Radio Listen here +
"It comes as no wonder that The New York Times included Rachel Poliquin’s The Breathless Zoo among its best coffee table books of 2012, calling it one among a privileged selection of titles that “make an impression.” And in the case of Poliquin’s book, this is an understatement. Along with a rigorously researched and written text, The Breathless Zoo offers up an aesthetically enviable book design, which includes a collection of sumptuously colored images that often amaze, as frequently unnerve, but always leave the curious mind wanting more. The only thing truly bad about The Breathless Zoo, in my humble estimation, is that I didn’t write it. —Alissa A. Walls, Humanimalia
“I have long been a fan of Rachel Poliquin’s otherworldly online museum, www.ravishingbeasts.com, but after reading The Breathless Zoo I know just what she means when she says that all taxidermy, like storytelling, is ‘deeply marked by human longing.’ I am already longing to read The Breathless Zoo again.” —Jay Kirk, author of Kingdom Under Glass
“With The Breathless Zoo, Rachel Poliquin has made a major contribution to the blossoming field of animal studies. This book is the new benchmark on the place of taxidermy in the social history of art, science, and popular culture. Marvelous, rigorous, and extensively well researched, the work is also refreshingly pleasurable to read. Throughout, Poliquin explores the complex questions around the rich cultural texture of taxidermy. And unlike other works on the topic, The Breathless Zoo examines not only what taxidermy is but also what it means. For those of us engaged in thinking about animals, this is the book on the culture of taxidermy we have long awaited—a book of great innovation that slices through the history of science, blood sports, and art.” —Mark Dion
“The Breathless Zoo is the book that the subject of taxidermy has long deserved. Full of provocative opinions, beautifully expressed, it is a subtle and thoroughly engaging exploration of the difficult question posed by all present-day encounters with taxidermy: ‘What is this animal-thing now?’” —Steve Baker, author of The Postmodern Animal
