FINDING THE BEAUTY IN A MAN AND HIS “CLUTTER”

Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins:

Rosamond Purcell (b. 1942) is a Boston-based photographer and writer whose domains are the palimpsest melding of past, present, and future; the natural and the man-made; the wonder and mystery of decay.

Raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts — her father was a professor of Byzantine history and Victorian literature — she’s spent much of her life in the dim back rooms of natural history museums.

In “Swift as a Shadow: Extinct and Endangered Animals” (Mariner Books, $16.68), she writes: 

“As a sojourner, I relish the random search: wandering through miles of corridors, opening hundreds of heavy doors, and choking through fumes, dust, and dark to find the holy grail.”

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

A huge thank you to all the many readers who responded to my call for Credible Witnesses: I so appreciate each and every one of you. I tried to respond to each person individually, but if I somehow missed you, my apologies.