![]() ![]() The level of artifice depicted in the photographs ebbs and flows, back and forth, as well. But there is a motion to it, a wave almost, as it seems to flow from the moist and green jungle and forest to spare and thorny desert, then back again to the rain forest. The disorientation is further enhanced by the image sequence it moves from one location to another, with no titles accompanying the images to identify which space we’re viewing at any time. So much so many of the colors seem too bright, hyperreal, and it is difficult to determine which elements are painted sets and which are live vegetation what is real, and what is true. This tension between the real and the fabricated is palpable, and the physical construction juxtaposed with the natural elements in the images heightens this effect. The printing, the quality of the color reproduction, is excellent. This is a beautiful picture book oversized, 12.5 x 10.5 inches, and the layout is simple – one large image per page, allowing the viewer to focus on each individual photograph as they turn the pages. She told me that she wanted this book to be “all about the pictures and ideas.” And it is that. Fritz, we discussed, among other things, how she originally envisioned this book. In this book, a selection of 44 photographs introduces the viewer to a new kind of environmental photography, interior views of exterior spaces, images that at first seem straightforwardly documentary but slowly reveal a probing, investigative, and questioning nature. ![]() In her preface, Fritz writes about her early inspiration for the project, “My focus was on the curious original landscape design of the biomes, especially where illusions from the natural world had been incorporated into what was essentially a research facility.” Millions of people experience these constructed landscapes every year, and these sites draw from a complicated history, from the 19th century mania for collection and exhibition, including the spectacles of the World’s Fairs of the 19th and early 20th centuries with the colonial legacy these suggest, and the development of the zoo from an institution meant to catalogue and display to one dedicated to creating “hyperreal, immersive environments.” She also writes, “These architectural and engineering marvels stand as working symbols of our current and complex relationship with the nonhuman world.” All of these environments were created as a way for people to experience landscapes from elsewhere, and they all serve the three ideals of research, education, and conservation. ![]() And the Eden Project, in Cornwall, England, is the world’s largest indoor rain forest (and the world’s largest enclosed landscape), built in a former China-clay pit as a model of land reclamation and sustainability. Biosphere 2, in southern Arizona, contains a variety of ecosystems within a 3-acre enclosure, including a tropical rainforest, mangrove wetlands, a fog desert, a savannah grassland, and an ocean habitat. The Henry Doorly Zoo, in Omaha, Nebraska, houses the Lied Jungle, the largest indoor rain forest in the United States, and the Desert Dome, the largest indoor desert under the largest geodesic dome in the world. ![]() In her series of the same name, photographed from 2007–2011, Fritz explores three man-made ecosystems, the largest enclosed landscapes in the world. But unlike the modest sounding spaces the definition above suggests, these worlds under glass exist on a mammoth scale. In her new monograph, Terraria Gigantica: The World Under Glass, photographer Dana Fritz presents a world as fantastic as the title implies - the exotic world of giant vivaria or terraria. Vivaria) – an enclosure, container, or structure adapted or prepared for keeping animals under semi-natural conditions for observation or study or as pets an aquarium or terrarium. ![]()
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