Review: Documentary ‘An Art That Nature Makes’ is a tour through photographer Rosamond Purcell’s work
Whether her subjects are natural or man-made, what Rosamond Purcell photographs can seem forever changed by how she sees it: a cactus pod looks like a Dutch clog; rusted machines exhibit a rich landscape of colors; layered moth wings in close-up reveal lines that suggest snakes. Molly Bernstein’s engaging if haphazardly curated documentary “An Art That Nature Makes: The Work of Rosamond Purcell” serves as a fine primer to academic darling Purcell’s object-driven focus, from which questions about the natural world and its relation to aesthetics are impossible to ignore.
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With one hand in the world of collectors (from rarefied museums to a 13-acre junkyard in Maine that’s been a mecca of sorts for her) and another in the realm of science (she collaborated often with the late, popular evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould), Purcell’s photography and writings make for a winning dive into the hidden, off-kilter beauty of such diverse elements as termite-rotted books and the abstract markings on arctic bird eggs.
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It’s no wonder gaze-centric documentarian Errol Morris and anomaly aficionado Ricky Jay (Bernstein’s last movie subject) are fans and interviewees, but one wishes Bernstein had more cleanly presented the arc of Purcell’s life and career and how her representative eye evolved. Nevertheless, the sheer number of images shown gives this brisk foray into Purcell’s work an admirable guided-tour feel.
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‘An Art That Nature Makes: The Work of Rosamond Purcell’
Not rated
Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes
Playing: Laemmle Monica Film Center, Santa Monica
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