What roles does taxidermy play in our relationship with live animals today? How does it operate as a signifier in contemporary representation? The paper discusses the photographic work of internationally renowned artist Roni Horn, paying particular attention to her work Dead Owl (1997) and the series Bird (1998-2007) both of which involve taxidermy. In relation to these works, I will argue that in opposition to the predominantly negative connotations taxidermy has acquired in human-animal studies discourses, Horn’s approach to taxidermy and the photographic idiom alike constitute a productive problematizer of animal representation.