This body of work is a modern interpretation of the millennia-old art of botanical image making. My focus are the wild plants of the Pacific Northwest, both indigenous and introduced species. I have found these plants in urban areas, back alleys, along sidewalks, empty lots, in places most people would overlook them or try to remove them. Each image can take months to complete in order to document the plant’s lifecycle. I create my photographs using a regular, flatbed, office scanner rather than a sophisticated camera. Paradoxically, the crude scanner produces images that appear hyper-real in part due to their macro and larger-than-life clarity that emphasizes extreme detail one would normally have difficulty seeing with the naked eye. The images have an extremely narrow depth of field and low luminosity. This makes the subject appear floating in a black void of space, creating a feeling akin to a momento mori.
