Klaus Pichler was wandering home from a bar one morning when he noticed a light coming from a basement window at Vienna’s Museum of Natural History. Even at that hour, he thought, someone was hard at work inside.

But Mr. Pichler didn’t see any people. He saw an antelope.

“It looked really strange and grotesque,” he said.

And it stuck with him. So, the next morning he contacted the museum’s director, who took him on a behind-the-scenes tour. The room he’d seen was the museum’s taxidermy division.

Mr. Pichler was intrigued — and fortunate. For the next three years, the museum let him roam its corridors and workshops, allowing him to capture a backstage view of a highly orchestrated production. The result of his snooping, “Skeletons in the Closet,” appeared at the Delhi Photo Festival in October.

“I really enjoyed knowing that I was alone in the basement with 4,000 stuffed animals,” he said.

Klaus Pichler

Mr. Pichler, 34, was raised in the countryside about two hours from Vienna, where he now lives. He recalls childhood visits to the museum with his parents on their occasional trips to the city. This time, it was different, yet familiar.

“It was like a wonderland when I entered,” he said. “I felt like a little kid again.”

Mr. Pichler had to ask the head of each department for permission to photograph. The more time he spent, and the more people knew about his project, the easier it became.

One day, he received a phone call. There was an animal in the elevator. And so Slide 10 was born.

“The museum is always on the move,” he said. “Nothing is static.”

After three years, and at least 50 visits, Mr. Pichler has captured some peculiar frames. Perhaps the strangest, he said, was the Neanderthal family relaxing in the parlor [Slide 6].

But the project is more than funny pictures. “If you think about it more, and more about the museum as a whole, you will begin to think about these animals,” he said. “Where did they come from?”

Some are quite old. The museum, housed in an elaborate building, opened its doors in 1889 as the Imperial Natural History Museum. Some of the collections migrated from the Austrian National Library to the new building.

“I think the real background of the series is quite sad and has a lot to do with colonialist thinking,” said Mr. Pichler, who has embarked upon some self-guided post-colonial studies.

“There were lots of bloody stories from the time the museum was opened.” (The English version of the museum’s Web site notes that “the 19th century was above all a time of grand expeditions into uncharted territories in the name of the Austrian emperor.”)

While others, like Richard Barnes, have pursued museum photography, Mr. Pichler doesn’t plan to keep at it. His reluctance comes, in part, from taxidermy’s recent popularity.

“Everybody posts, especially on the Tumblr blogs. Taxidermy is quite hip,” he said. “It’s strange for me because when I look at my project, it’s just a first view. When you look at the pictures, it’s humorous or funny.”

In November 2012, the museum is hosting an exhibition of the photographs. Mr. Pichler is working with a sociologist to prepare the background for the exhibit, from cultural, scientific and post-colonial perspectives.

“We have to criticize the museum as an institution itself,” he said.