Confiscated!

"There were things, like boots or a baseball cap out of snakeskin leather, that you might have bought in a souvenir shop without thinking that they might be forbidden," Markus Bühler-Rasom told swissinfo.ch Markus Bühler-Rasom

"On a shelf in the basement were hundreds of copulating couples made of ivory." Markus Bühler-Rasom Markus Bühler-Rasom

"Okay, but the elephant foot that had been turned into a stool - that was a bit hard to understand." Markus Bühler-Rasom Markus Bühler-Rasom

"A whole lot of confiscated objects are made out of snakes or snake leather. Once a man from Africa was stopped by customs at Zurich airport. He was wearing an entire suit made out of snake leather. They made him take it off. At the time I wondered what he was wearing when he left the customs area." Markus Bühler-Rasom Markus Bühler-Rasom

After two days in the basement claustrophobia really begins to set in, says the photographer, "in particular when your camera lens is really, really close to a bottle of schnapps with a lizard inside. And you don't see anything - until the flash goes off, and there's a lizard looking at you. And you're really happy when you can turn the lights on, just to be sure that the lizard is still in the bottle." Markus Bühler-Rasom

Swiss photographer Markus Bühler-Rasom spent two days in the basement storeroom of the Federal Veterinary Office in 2009, surrounded by hundreds of illegally imported and confiscated objects, taking pictures of the most bizarre and striking items.

This content was published on January 4, 2013 - 11:00

The idea for the photo shoot came after he met veterinary officials to negotiate the release of his own confiscated polar bear fur boots. It was a “fascinating” array of materials, he told swissinfo.ch.

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