Arresting Photos Illuminate the World of Wildlife Contraband
A photographer uses artful styling to bring attention to human demand for wildlife products.
Picture of a zebra

A taxidermied zebra head confiscated by U.S. Fish and Wildlife officers is one of the roughly 1.5 million items housed at the National Wildlife Repository in Colorado.
Photograph by Britta Jaschinski
By Alexa Keefe
Photographs by Britta Jaschinski

PUBLISHED October 27, 2017

A pair of footstools made from elephant feet. A coat with matching shoes, hat, and purse made from the pelts of 20 leopards. Crates filled with bags and bags of dessicated seahorses. Britta Jaschinski’s photographs of items seized at airports and border crossings are a quest to understand what it is about the human psyche that fuels a demand for wildlife products, even as this causes suffering and, in some cases, pushes animals to the brink of extinction.

“The problem right now…