For Diana Michener bones are treasures and this book is her preservation of them through
photography in a way that honors their value as vessels of lives past. Inspired by
nineteenthcentury photography along with Paul Strand and Irving Penn Michener chose the
appropriately delicate and precious medium of platinum prints which she crafted in her
darkroom from analogue film shot on a Hasselblad 500 C camera. Bones recreates both the look
and spirit of these prints through offset printing on Phoenixmotion Xantur paper each image
interspersed with glassine leaves to create the sense of an antique photographic album.
Michener's subjects are both human and animal bones photographed between 2018 and 2021 in
collections including Luxembourg's Museum of Natural History Strasbourg's Zoological Museum
and the Musée de Cambrai-often in restricted areas thus revealing many bones not normally
accessible to the public. In her words: Bones bear witness to a life and in and of themselves
they show the magnificent structures of our forms. They are what is left.
