Photo du Jour: The Sperm Whale

For Animal Cabinet, Ghent, Belgium-based photographer Maroesjka Lavigne explores her enthrallment with creatures great and small by capturing everything from cases filled with taxidermic birds to tanks inhabited by jellyfish. She encountered this humongous beached sperm whale by happenstance, soon realizing that the behemoth was not a real animal but a replica. Mouth agape, the fallen beast lays before a row of buildings, a bleak set of manmade structures encroaching on the invisible water below. Lavigne explains that the tones of the beach and the rain tinged the scene with an ineffable sadness that ultimately compelled her to capture it.

Image © Maroesjka Lavigne