Flora Photographica is a striking and extravagantly designed album that celebrates the glorious beauty and pathos of flowers in all their multifarious forms. In these pages flowers speak to us with a greater intensity and more subtle modulation than even in nature itself. For each bloom shown has been observed with that acuity of vision which only the most sensitive of artist-photographers can bring to bear. What we see is both reality and revelation. The artist's eye decodes the flower's message and sharpens its beauty. Here are Mapplethorpe's tulips, half-metal, half-living creatures; Steichen's delphiniums, preserved in an everlasting summery perfection of blues and pinks; Atget's open-air profusion of poppies; Cunningham's magnolia, richly fertile and lush; Man Ray's surreal yet pure calla lily; Chris Enos's dying poinsettia, its colours curdling in decay. These are masterpieces of photographic art, in an astonishing range of media, from photography's beginnings up to the present day. Full details of the techniques and processes used are elucidated in the commentaries and introduction by the acclaimed photo-historian William A. Ewing. But, above all, here are flowers as we have never seen them before, an unparalleled display to marvel at, contemplate and enjoy.

Table of Contents

The flower in photography; the plates; bloom; enquiry; persona; essence; eros; hybrid; arrangement; mutation; observation; quintessence; commentaries on the plates.

About the Author

William A. Ewing is an acclaimed photohistorian. Among his many previous books are The Body and A Century of the Body.

Reviews

'Extraordinary... a magnificent collection' - Anna Pavord, The Observer 'The most exquisite study of form and texture... stunning' - R.A. Magazine 'Superlative pictures by photographers from Talbot to Robert Mapplethorpe' - New Scientist 'Extremely well presented, researched and produced... a must' - The World of Interiors 'Magnificent' - Nature