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The Theatre of Insects: Photographs by Jo Whaley

by Jo Whaley, Photographs; Linda Wiener and Deborah Klochko, Essays
Chronicle Books, San Francisco, CA, 2008
128 pp. illus. 64 col. Trade, $22.95
ISBN: 9780811861557.

Reviewed by Peter Smithers
School of Biomedical & Biological Sciences
University of Plymouth

Jo Whaley's photographs posses a dream-like quality that entrance and fascinate the viewer. The high definition and often stark contrasts they exhibit have the ultra real quality that dreams often posses. In her introduction to the book, Deborah Klochko quotes from David Cronenberg's film, The Fly ("I am an insect that dreamed he was a man but am now awake") and draws the parallel that Whaley's photographs awake the viewer to the insect. Whaley's photographs are snatches from a dream, visions of some distant, beautiful but terrifying landscape, images that astound and inspire. The insect world invokes all of these emotions but rather than being a distant unreachable land, it is under our very feet. Whaley's images reveal the wonder of this microcosm in the form of a haunting, playful and engaging series of portraits.

As an entomologist, I am pleased to see the insects playing themselves in this performance rather than cast as anthropomorphic heroes and villains. Solid characters passing through mysterious landscapes, a theatre of moody luminosity that suggests impending drama. The images are also a series of chromatic and calligraphic metaphors that explore the inherent beauty of the insects portrayed. The synergy between the insects and the carefully crafted sets heighten the viewers perception, Whaley is a photographic Puck who plunges them into an entomological midsummer nights dream with a flamboyant cast of invertebrates.

One of my favourite images is plate 25 that shows the splendidly armed beetle Eupatorus pinned to a balsa wood raft, adrift on an alien ocean. A survivor or a sacrifice, no just the way that entomologists arrange their specimens so that all of their limbs are in view. An illusion shattered; not so, it was wonderful to see the prosaically routine activities of science displayed as a moment of beauty and mystery, moments that often pass us by in the frantic rush of the working day.

Another that caught my imagination was plate 33 that displays images of the tropical butterfly Idea. This is a wonderful metaphor placing the stark black symmetry of the hieroglyphic wings against an aged, stained musical score. A suggested rhythm that flows across the page, fleeting, and ephemeral as indeed are the butterflies in their native forests.

The images are flanked by a series of essays that are refreshing in their breadth. Cutting across traditional boundaries they range across the history of science, entomology, aesthetics and philosophy. Coming from three very different fields the authors illuminate the already vibrant images placing them in an aesthetic, cultural and scientific context.

Jo Whaley's images are glimpses of the wonder and beauty that we can find in the natural world if we just take the time to stop and look.