Life: As We’ve Known It

This exhibit is now closed. Check out what you can currently experience at the museum here.

Life: As We’ve Known It by David Ellingsen
March 17 – August 19, 2018

Reflect on the beauty and fragility of life through intimate photographic portraits of the flora, fauna, and fossils in our museum.

There is a distinct eeriness looking at an image from this series by David Ellingsen. The dark glow suspending each subject is as compelling as it is unnatural. How will these photographs be viewed by our descendants and what will remain of these species, or their human viewers? As our planet enters another mass extinction period, only the sixth in its 4.5 billion year history, the photographs in Life: As We’ve Known It respond to this anthropogenic event of unprecedented scale.

David Ellingsen is a Canadian photographer and conservation artist creating images of site-specific installations, landscapes and object studies that speak to the natural world and Man’s impact upon it. Ellingsen’s photographs are part of the permanent collections of the Chinese Museum of Photography, South Korea’s Datz Museum of Art, and Vancouver’s Beaty Biodiversity Museum. His work has been shortlisted for Photolucida’s Critical Mass Book Award, awarded First Place at the Prix de la Photographie Paris, and First Place at the International Photography Awards in Los Angeles.

Exhibition Contributors

Part of the 2018 Capture Festival

Curator
Yukiko Stranger-Galey

Designers
Derek Tan
Haseenah Molumo

Fabricator
Lesha Koop

Scientific Advisors
Cowan Tetrapod Collection: Ildiko Szabo, Christopher Stinson
Marine Invertebrates Collection: Christopher Harley
Herbarium: Linda Jennings, Olivia Lee
Spencer Entomological Collection: Karen Needham, Chris Ratzlaff, Don Griffiths
Fish Collection: Eric Taylor

Beaty Nocturnal – Life: As We’ve Known It Opening

April 19: Come by for a night at the museum and celebrate the opening of Life: As We’ve Known It.

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