The New Yorker’s website highlights with the images above the newly updated version of a book we intend to add to our collection:
The herbarium at the Natural History Museum in London contains nearly six million plant specimens, many of which are centuries old and were gathered from far-flung parts of the world. The British photographer Nick Knight was introduced to the collection in 1992, while exhibiting his own work at the museum. In the following years, he sifted through the collection, photographing thousands of what he considered to be the most visually alluring samples. The eighth edition of Knight’s book “Flora” is now available for purchase through Schirmer/Mosel.
All photographs by Nick Knight/Schirmer/Mosel.
The photographer’s publicist has this to say:
On one of his expedition strolls through the herbarium at the National History
Museum in London Nick Knight, the young international star among British
photographers, discovered the fascinating world of pressed plants in the Museum’s collection, botanically one of the most significant. Nick Knight spent over three and a half years screening and examining the herbarium’s over six million plants. Thousands were considered for this publication, hundreds were photographed. And he selected the final 46 of them in what were “many, extremely difficult and agonising hours” as he puts it.His choice was influenced less by scientific criteria than by the overwhelming
beauty of the individual specimens. What impressed him most was that the plants did not look at all like plants. Several are shaped like fans, some look like feathers and others resemble happy-go-lucky children’s sketches. One feature shared by them all is their fragile corporeality, filigree transparency and their amazingly subtle colours that powerfully accentuate the magnificent texture of every single plant.In Nick Knight’s colour photographs nature and art blend to form a unique
combination. The whole book seems to be imbued with the aesthetic happiness
Nick Knight experienced on his photographic expedition, which he describes in
these words: “There are few things that make one happier than discovering a new way of seeing the familiar. Seeing in a way I could not have imagined. It is a very liberating feeling and one that makes me very optimistic.”The curator of the National History Museum, Sandra Knapp, has written the short explanatory texts on the individual plants selected, a number of which were preserved over 300 years ago. They reflect the botanical characteristics of the plants, the history of botanical research and the technique of botanical preservation, which makes the book indispensable for botanists and biologists alike.
It should also be added that the credit for the delightful design of this book goes to Peter Saville, the famous designer. The superb colour separations in the printing and the colour reproductions stemmed from the Novaspace technique of the Berlin lithographer Dieter Kirchner.
I would really appreciate if you introduced the floral enchantment of this very
special book to your readers. FLORA certainly ranks among the most beautiful
books to be launched this spring.
Organikos 