Extinct & Endangered: Insects in Peril

This joint project of photographer Levon Biss and the American Museum of Natural History contains indelible images of 40 extinct or endangered species in the museum’s collection, selected from its vast holdings by a team of scientists. They range from imperiled old friends like the monarch butterfly and the nine-spotted ladybug to the remote Lord Howe Island stick insect of Australia, thought to be extinct for most of the 20th century until a tiny population was discovered and bred in captivity in 2001. All were sent to Biss’s studio, where he created commanding portraits that can be enlarged 300 times lifesize to reveal vivid full-page details of form and color—a world invisible to the naked eyes. The result is a book that insists on the momentous significance of these small, mostly unknown creatures.