Rosamond Purcell

“Expect to be overwhelmed, not just by quantity (quality, too) but also variety and, for lack of a better word, theatricality. Purcell’s profound, even exacting, respect for her subject matter doesn’t keep her from honoring it with bravura treatment. It’s hard to think of a photographer with a body of work less given to what she calls “the curse of the predictable in what was then a pre-Photoshop world.” Few things are as unpredictable as enchantment, and enchantment is what her work frequently has to offer.” —BOSTON GLOBE

“What is an appropriate subject for art?” asks Errol Morris in his foreword to ROSAMOND PURCELL: NATURE STANDS Aside (Rizzoli Electa/Addison Gallery, $65). “I’m partial to death and deliquescence.” This morbid domain is Purcell’s field of operation, and her particular territory is the natural-history museums where she documents the corpora of the formerly living: birds, eggs, shells, bats, butterflies, monkeys, moles, and lizards. Her high-contrast color photos feature straightforward, portrait-style compositions—as if a group of Javanese wattled lapwings were posing for their high school club photo. There’s no need to defamiliarize a mastodon’s molar or the corpse of a pig-footed bandicoot. But this directness with its seeming lack of aesthetic inflection is deceptive. By prizing clarity and detail over compositional finesse, Purcell emphasizes the strangeness of her subjects even as her clinical approach lends an ordinariness to the viewer’s experience.” —BOOKFORUM

"This monograph by notable local artist Rosamond Purcell serves as the catalogue of a spectacular career retrospective exhibition currently taking up the entire 2nd floor of the Addison Gallery in Andover until Dec. 31st. With several insightful essays as well as an interview with the artist, this book stunningly displays the evolution of this remarkable American artist." —PORTER SQUARE BOOKS