Title: Flora
Author: Nick Knight
Publisher: Schirmer/Mosel, 1997
Photographs by Nick Knight; 80 full-page color illustrations
With Flora, the photographer Nick Knight reinvigorated the tradition of botanical photography initiated by Karl Blossfeldt in the 1890s. Each page of this elegantly designed volume contains a single image of a carefully selected botanical specimen from the Natural History Museum in London. These beautifully toned color photographs are presented in a manner that provokes curiosity in the natural world, and encourages detailed inspection of both the minutiae of the plant or flower, and of the unmistakable graphic tendencies of the image as a whole. Knight’s enthusiasm for seeing the familiar in a new light is complemented by the appendix of educational passages composed by the curator and botanist Sandra Knapp. The combination of the imaginary and the substantive, the artistic and the scientific, and the new and the old makes this book of photographs a fascinating addition to any art or botanical collection.
