The shark museum

item details

NameThe shark museum

ProductionMarie Shannon; photographer; 1992/2004; New Zealand

Classificationblack-and-white prints, gelatin silver prints, black-and-white photographs, works of art

Materialsphotographic paper, silver, photographic gelatin

Materials Summaryblack and white photograph, gelatin silver print

Techniquesblack-and-white photography

DimensionsImage: 441mm (width), 378mm (height)

Registration NumberO.027310

Credit linePurchased 2004

Overview

Models and photographs both attempt to represent the world, with varying degrees of success. The shark museum asks us which is more suspect: the clumsy artifice of the shark display or the more artful fakery of the camera?

This extract originally appeared in New Zealand Photography Collected: 175 Years of Photography in Aotearoa (Te Papa Press, 2025) on page 351.

The top half of Marie Shannon’s photograph is a potentially convincing depiction of a museum display, complete with numbered, wall-mounted specimens and spot lighting. But the pipe-cleaner figures and wonky rope barrier supported by matchsticks below conspire all too obviously to spoil the illusion. The construction has a naivety that suggests a school project, recalling the sorts of things that stick in the mind from childhood visits to the museum. Models, like photographs, represent the world with varying degrees of conviction. When combined, the two can pull in the same direction to create a convincing illusion — a photograph of a model makes it look more persuasive by stripping it of context and rendering its scale ambiguous. But here The shark museum plays with illusion, reminding us of photography’s tendency to fictionalise.