20x16 in. Beatriz DÃaz Nigella damascena; $3.99; Botanica Inc.; Brooklyn, NY; 12/05/08
When I moved to New York City I discovered that there was a different relation between the citizens and nature. There is something very clean and pristine about how New Yorkers use nature as decoration. I was walking through Queens, photographing another project when I found a house heavily decorated with plastic plants. I continued my walk but through the days I discovered that the image of that house was still bothering me. I could not stop thinking about plastic plants, how they are made only for decorative purpose and how their lack of life contradicts the whole idea of their existence. I asked myself if if was possible that these plants were a new species in our world. I decided to study them as a scientist would, and decided to create an herbarium of artificial plants. The systematic and formal decisions function as a botanical study and as an explicit comment on the work of the photographer Karl Blossfeldt. These images are also an investigation into the simulation of primordial forms in the patterns of plastic plants. The images ironically shift between opposites: seductive-repulsive, beautiful-horrifying, natural-artificial.
