Yes, they ruin your favorite knitwear, but boy are they pretty. (From 2017)
"All the books have dead specimens pinned like little soldiers," Gowin says. "I have nothing against that ... But I liked the alertness that they exhibit in their feet and their wings, and the way their wings line up."
He traveled to Central and South America nearly 40 times to photograph moths in the wild, often joining expeditions with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama City. Gowan documented most in the middle of the night, kneeling before a UV light pointed at a white sheet or art print. They were tricky little subjects: Some flew away at the burst of the flash; others played dead.
Just because they're laid out by the dozen, though, doesn't mean they're not distinctive. “Moths are almost totally lacking in expression, but they do have body language of a kind,” Gowin says. “That's what I tried to preserve—how the wings align, the tension in the feet."