Recently I saw an exhibition of Danielle Van Ark’s photo series „The Mounted Life“ and was struck by the humour, storytelling and compositions portraying taxidermy in museum storage hangars around the world. She does a remarkable job of capturing the internal spirit and nature of these creatures, as if they awoke and found themselves suddenly stuck inside the husk of a giant, modern facility.

The photos are composed wonderfully – a herd of bewildered impalas, or a flock of birds trying to poke up through their plastic cover, proving that even after removing a creature from both it’s environment and of life itself, their behaviors and innate traits still find a way to come through.