Plant Love

Tragopogon pratensis
Edvard Koinberg
Herbarium Amoris

Through March 16, the House of Sweden in Washington, DC, is hosting a collection of luminous botanical photographs by Edvard Koinberg. The exhibition, "Herbarium Amoris," is a tribute to Swedish-born systematist Carl Linnaeus, whose innovative classification of plants - by the number and gender of their sexual organs - reportedly caused a salacious stir in eighteenth-century Europe.

This collection of photos is hardly controversial (Koinberg is no Georgia O'Keefe), but it is stunning. The color is simply breathtaking.

Tulipa; Dryopteris filx-mas
Edvard Koinberg
Herbarium Amoris

At the exhibit last week, I was reminded strongly of the photogravures of Karl Blossfeldt (1865-1932). In a way, Blossfeldt's work is the exact opposite of Koinberg's. Blossfeldt worked in black and white. Blossfeldt's best-known compositions are all about form and rhythm; his crisp, starkly-lit specimens could be figures from a botanical textbook. In comparison, Koinberg's work is more romantic; he lets his pliant forms dissolve, edges melting into velvety black. Yet both photographers capture their subjects with such intimacy, I feel like holding my breath so I don't blow a petal or a seed out of place.

Teasel, Dipsacus laciniatus
Karl Blossfeldt

Maidenhair fern, Adiantum pedatum
Karl Blossfeldt

Two whole books of Karl Blossfeldt's photography are archived online here.