f  l  o  r  i  l  e  g  i  u  m , volume 2 

an anthology, a collection of flowers; Latin florilegus - flower culling, flora - flower + legere - gather

I have included plants, flowers and gardens in my photographs for many years. My approach has evolved as my interest in gardening has grown. I have come to realize that the skills I bring to imagemaking and gardening are different sides of the same coin - working with color, texture, rhythm, drama. Both endeavors are interwoven for me. They are different expressions of the same dialog about my place in the natural world.

Florilegium's images are filled with leaves, flowers and seed pods I have collected from gardens. Many are past their prime but are of interest precisely for that reason - they possess a subtle beauty that plants in full bloom do not. I show plants in various stages of growth and senescence, layering textures and images to create an intricate visual environment.These techniques let me most fully express my experience of gardens.

This ongoing body of work explores the cameraless and filmless image technique that I have been working with since 1998. Cameraless images are as old as the photographic medium itself. Mine contribute to a tradition of botanical subject matter begun with Henry Fox Talbot's Photogenic drawings of plant materials (ca.1830's) and Anna Atkin's cameraless botanical studies of British Algae (ca.1843).

Today's tools have facilitated a new direction in this tradition. I created these images by directly recording my subject matter on a flatbed scanner. With the aid of photo manipulation software I layer images, embellish areas, add colors. My completed digital files are printed directly on to continuous tone color printing paper using laser diodes and thermal dye transfer rather than traditional optics and chemistry. The resulting prints are as permanent as conventional color prints. Although the tools and techniques I use are new the process of dialog with the work to create the final composition remains the same.