I am a photographic practice-researcher and educator, currently residing in Cambridgeshire, England. After living and studying in South Africa for seventeen years, with a break spent living and working in Germany, I returned to the UK in 1998 as a freelancer and lecturer based in London.
I was awarded my PhD from Middlesex University in 2022, for my practice-led research project, An Inert State: Tracing a Double-defiance of Death via Photographic Poiesis. At present, I am Course Leader for Photography at Buckinghamshire New University.
My practice-research investigates the photograph’s binary expressions of death, preservation and visuality, explored via haptic and embodied methodologies, with an interdisciplinary interest in ecology, metapsychology and museology.
Solo Exhibitions.
Animal Afterlives. Museum of Zoology, Cambridge, Nov 2021 – Feb 2022. Solo exhibition.
Specere, Avenue Gallery, University of Northampton, October 2017.
Changing Spaces, Empty Shop Project, Cambridge, November 2010.
A Space of My Own, Museum of Cambridge, September 2009.
spirits, Museum of Zoology, Cambridge, August 2008.
Fractures: Exhibit B, Mary Ward Centre, London, September 2001.
Land: Crust & Steel, NSA Gallery, Durban, South Africa, January 1998 (duo show).
Gross-Stadt, Castle of Good Hope, Cape Town, South Africa, April 1998.
Fractures: Exhibit A, Café Camissa, Cape Town, South Africa, May 1997.
Chameleons, AVA Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa, March 1996.
Group Exhibitions.
Verdant, The Art Pavilion, Mile End, London, July 2022.
A Space of One’s Own. David Parr House, Cambridge, UK, 2020. Online extension of 2009 exhibition.
Co-Existence, Richmond, Kentucky, US, April 2017.
Visualising the Animal, Carlisle Photography Festival, Cumbria, UK, June – July 2015.
Royal Photographic Society Biennial, The Harlequin Gallery, UK Nationwide, 2012.
CamIris 2007, Artworks, Cambridge, August 2007.
Work, Lauderdale House, London, April 2005.
Travel Photographer of the Year competition and exhibition, London 2003.
Art, Science & Technology, New Greenham Arts, Newbury, May 2000.
Created Space, Whiteleys, London, June 1999.
Notes from Underground, Dostoevsky Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, April 1999.
13, Klein Karoo Arts Festival, South Africa, April 1997.
Project Field Work.
Research project visit on natural history dioramas at the Powell-Cotton Museum, Birchington-on-Sea, UK, 2019.
Research project on taxidermy specimen storage at the Natural History Museum, London, 2017-18.
Research project and conversation with curators on natural history dioramas at The Field Museum, Chicago, 2017.
Research project on museum spaces, displays and storage at Science Museum; Blythe House; Grant Museum; Wellcome Collection, London, 2016-17.
Year-long research project funded by the Royal Photographic Society to photograph the public taxidermy displays at the Natural History Museum, South Kensington London, 2015.-16.
Research project on the natural history dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History, New York and the University of Nebraska State Museum, Lincoln, US, 2016.
Research project on domestic dog taxidermy at the Natural History Museum, Tring, 2012-14.
Oral histories collaboration project commissioned by Museum of Cambridge, UK, 2009.
Year-long residency for research project on displayed and stored specimen collections at the University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge, 2007-8.
Exhibition Curation & Artist Talks.
Co-organiser, curator and juror, Co-Existence Exhibition, Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, Kentucky, USA, 22-26 March 2017.
Taxidermy Photography as Still Life, visiting speaker, University of Middlesex, UK,18 October 2018.
Artist talk, University of Northampton, UK, 10 November 2013.
Conferences (selection).
Murphy, Alexandra. “Capturing and Revealing – Photographic conditions for exploring a double defiance of death as a manifestation of the photo-dermy concept.” Paper presented at the 4th World Congress of Environmental History, University of Oulu, Finland. 19-23 August.
Murphy, Alexandra. “On Transience: Contemplating a tactile and haptic remembrance of the obsolete museum taxidermy specimen through the carte-de-visite photo-album.” Workshop presentation at the World Congress of Environmental History, University of Oulu, Finland. 19-23 August, 2024.
Murphy, Alexandra. “The Forgotten Zoological Garden: A Photographic Study of the Heterotopic Museum Taxidermy Display.” Paper presented at Exhibiting Animals. Curatorial Strategies and Narratives, University of Warsaw, 18-19 November, 2022.
Murphy, Alexandra. “The Seeing (and Unseen): Making Photographs of Museological Taxidermy Displays in Pursuit of an Alternative Gaze.” Paper presented at The Animal Gaze Constructed, London Metropolitan University, UK. 6-7 March, 2020.
Murphy, Alexandra. “Forever in Stasis: Dialectical Dynamics between the Photograph and the Taxidermy Specimen.” Paper presented at FORMAT19 FOREVER//NOW Photography Conference and Festival, University of Derby, UK. 15 March, 2019.
Murphy, Alexandra. “Specere and the Photograph: Co-Existing in Perpetual States of Preservation.” Paper and Exhibition presented at the Seeing with Animals conference, Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, US. 22-26 March, 2017.
Funding, Honours and Awards.
Learning Enhancement and Innovation Bid, Institute for Learning & Teaching in Higher Education, UK – team funding for developing online learning toolkits and assessment etivities, Online Photography Toolkits – Digital Approaches to Practical Delivery, 2016-17.
Royal Photographic Society funding award for research project, Specere II at the Natural History Museum, London, 2015.
Learning Enhancement and Innovation Bid, Institute for Learning & Teaching in Higher Education – team funding for integrating online learning technologies for MA Photography program, From Material to Virtual: An exploration of visual technologies to develop an online/interactive-learning platform for Photography, 2014-15.
The Sir Richard Stapley Trust postgraduate funding award for research project, Exploring Unheimlichkeit, 2006.
Winston Churchill Fellowship – shortlisted for photography project, Prison Islands, 2004.
Two-week artist residency awarded for project on Robben Island, Cape, South Africa, 1997.
Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), South Africa, postgraduate funding award for project, The Photo-transformation of the Human Form, 2005.
Book Publications (anthologies).
Murphy, Alexandra. “The Forgotten Zoological Garden: A Photographic Study of the Heterotopic Museum Taxidermy Display.” In Exhibiting Animals: Curatorial Strategies and Narratives, edited by Dorota Łagodzka and Magdalena Wróblewska. Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlag, in press.
Murphy, Alexandra. “Forever in Stasis: Dialectical Dynamics between the Photograph and the Taxidermy Specimen.” In Mythologies, Identities and Territories of Photography: Forever//Now, edited by Gemma Marmalade and Philip Harris, 11-31. UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020.
Co-Existence: An Art Exhibition, edited by Julia Schlosser, 40-41, 90, 99. USA: Blurb, 2017.
Journey One: Travel Photographer of the Year, edited by Chris Coe, 123. UK: TPOTY, 2005.
The Big Issue Book of Home, edited by Eddie Ephraums, 30. UK: Hodder & Stoughton, 2000.
What’s Missing?, edited by Eddie Ephraums, 90-97. UK: Argentum, 2000.
Book Cover Illustration (selection).
Murphy, John Gerard. All God’s Children. UK: Vanguard, 2013.
Gordimer, Nadine. Beethoven was One-sixteenth Black. UK: Bloomsbury, 2008.
Coetzee, J.M. Waiting for the Barbarians. UK: Vintage, 2004.
Jones, Russell Celyn. Surface Tension. UK: Abacus, 2001.
Stewart, Leah. Body of a Girl. UK: Piatkus, 2001.
Christie, Agatha. 4:50 from Paddington. UK: Macmillan Audio, 2001.
Media Features & Interviews.
Ashby, Jack, “Animal Afterlives: Photography, Dioramas, and Forgetting that Taxidermy is Dead” (2021).
“International Women’s Day 2022, Member Voices.” Association of Photographers (2022): 13-17.
Kisiel Emma, “Alexandra Murphy.” Muybridge’s Horse (2017), http://
Kiernan, Kat, “Alexandra Murphy.” Don’t Take Pictures (2017).
Interview by Andrew Cattanach, “Death Becomes Her,” in The Journal 156 (2016): 816.
“Endframe Portfolio.” British Journal of Photography (2004): 43-44.
“Endframe Portfolio.“ British Journal of Photography (2000): 43.
Interview, “Sharing a Vision,” SA Photo (1998): 43.
Interview by Guido Duken, “Beyond the Image,” Directions (1995): 66-71.
Examples of editorial publications can be seen on my Editorial page.
Examples of editorial publications can be seen on my Editorial page.
View my doctoral research project portfolio here.
View my Orcid research and scholarship record here.