ART

Award-winning photographer Susan Middleton is a former Chair of the California Academy of Sciences Department of Photography and a Santa Clara University alumna. She has spent nearly thirty years documenting rare and endangered species. Her images seamlessly blend art and science through compelling portraits of creatures that are seldom, if ever, seen by the public. Through this exhibition, which highlights two distinct bodies of work, the artist introduces us to a suite of alluring creatures that illustrate the remarkable, mind-boggling variety found in our natural world.

In Evidence of Evolution, Middleton pictures extinct species from the collections of the California Academy of Sciences. The images, which are at once contemplative and reverential, celebrate the evolutionary development of plants and animals. Framed against a plain black or white background, the specimens featured in these photographs both illustrate and trace the process of adaptation. Completed in 2009, the series commemorates the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's monumental text on evolution, On the Origin of Species.

Middleton's more recent series, Spineless, focuses on marine invertebrates, showcasing the extreme diversity of deep sea life. Alternately colorful, quirky, spindly, spiky, and bubbly, the invertebrates appear almost surreal in their abstract forms. Like the specimens in Evidence of Evolution, the species shown here are pictured against neutral backgrounds in order to enhance and highlight their individual features. Through these highly-detailed images, we begin to see how marine creatures adapt and change to improve their survival at the bottom of the ocean.

Together, the images in Susan Middleton... Photographs seem to suggest the need for conservation and preservation. Yet, perhaps more significantly, they inspire a sense of wonderment and fascination with the amazing world in which we live.