ROSAMOND PURCELL

(American, b. 1942)

Rosamond Wolff Purcell is a leading American photographer whose strangely beautiful, often unsettling images of objects from the natural and man-made world have earned her international acclaim. Her collaborations with such diverse intellects as paleontologist and science historian Stephen Jay Gould, magician Ricky Jay, and Shakespeare scholar Michael Witmore testify to both the depth and breadth of her interests: the murky boundary between art and science, the mystery of decomposition and metamorphosis, and the universal human need to collect and classify.

Her numerous books include Book Nest, Illuminations, A Glorious Enterprise: The Museum of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and Owls Head: On the Nature of Lost Things, a lyrical account of Purcell’s 20-year photographic “excavation” of a Maine junk yard.

Purcell’s work has been exhibited at many major museums throughout the United States and Europe, most recently in 2022 in Nature Stands Aside, a major retrospective at the Addison Gallery of American Art. An accompanying catalog, Rosamond Purcell: Nature Stands Aside (2022, Rizzoli Electa) by Gordon Wilkins and Mark Dion, was highlighted as one of the best photo books of 2022 by Lucy Sante in the New York Times.

Purcell’s work is in the permanent collections of the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the National Academy of Science, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Artist Statement: Landscapes of the Passing Strange: Reflections from Shakespeare

ROSAMOND PURCELL, The Undiscovered Country, 2010
19 1/2 x 25 1/2 inches | 49.53 x 64.77 cm.
Archival pigment print
Open edition

ROSAMOND PURCELL, An Art That Nature Makes, 2010
25 x 31 inches | 63.5 x 78.74 cm.
Archival pigment print
Open edition

ROSAMOND PURCELL, The Conjurer, Prospero, 2010
28 1/2 x 21 inches | 72.39 x 53.34 cm.
Archival pigment print
Open edition

ROSAMOND PURCELL, Exit Pursued by a Bear, 2010
22 1/2 x 37 inches | 57.15 x 93.98 cm.
Archival pigment print
Open edition

ROSAMOND PURCELL, Remembering Old St. Paul’s, 2010
21 x 29 1/2 inches | 53.34 x 74.93 cm.
Archival pigment print
Open edition

ROSAMOND PURCELL, Jaques’ Travels, 2010
30 x 31 1/2 inches | 76.2 x 80.01 cm.
Archival pigment print
Open edition

ROSAMOND PURCELL, Rude Mechanicals, 2010
14 1/2 x 21 1/2 inches | 36.83 x 54.61 cm.
Archival pigment print
Open edition

ROSAMOND PURCELL, The Blasted Heath, 2010
23 x 37 inches | 58.42 x 93.98 cm.
Archival pigment print
Open edition

ROSAMOND PURCELL, The Field of Cloth and Gold, 2010
18 1/2 x 31 inches | 46.99 x 78.74 cm.
Archival pigment print
Open edition

ROSAMOND PURCELL, Armor on the Shore, 2010
18 x 25 inches | 45.72 x 63.5 cm.
Archival pigment print
Open edition

ROSAMOND PURCELL, The Messenger Approaches, 2010
20 x 13 inches | 50.8 x 33.02 cm.
Archival pigment print
Open edition

ROSAMOND PURCELL, All are Fled, 2010
13 1/2 x 21 1/2 inches | 34.29 x 54.61 cm.
Archival pigment print
Open edition

ROSAMOND PURCELL, Barren Winter, 2010
19 x 30 inches | 48.26 x 76.2 cm.
Archival pigment print
Open edition

ROSAMOND PURCELL, Dancing Mandrake Roots, 2010
17 x 32 inches | 43.18 x 81.28 cm.
Archival pigment print
Open edition