FLORA
It’s all been done. And yet it’s never done.
The Prussian photographer Karl Blossfeldt (1865-1932) shot
black-and-white close-ups of plant forms—ornate, brooding
images on the far edge of botanical documentation.
In 1932, Ansel Adams shot a rose blossom on a piece of driftwood,
and they called it art.
Today, calendar photographers shoot flowers in the loudest
possible colors, bless their hearts, and earn a living.
If we ascribe a purpose to photography—scientific
tool, art object, commercial product, etc.—then shooting
flowers is banal, one of the least promising things to do.
But if you are a photographer trying to attend to the world
purposelessly, with a quiet mind, then it turns out that
flowers, too, are still speaking to us—regardless
of what convention tells them to do—because, as saints
and sages round the world declare, the doorways to the radiant
Present are everywhere, in every dust mote, and are everywhere
ajar.
That is why Tolstoy said love at first sight is the only
way we ever really fall in love.
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 and is related to the iris of the eye, the iris diaphragm of cameras and such words as iridium and iridescent. Iridium is element 77 on the periodic table. It forms compounds in vivid colors and is the most corrosion- resistant metal known.'))
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, has been famous for its peonies for millennia. The Japanese used peony root to treat convulsions.'))
, because the roots are a diuretic. They are also a coffee substitute, a digestive and liver cleanse, and a treatment for anemia and jaundice. Dandelion leaves are eaten as steamed greens or raw in salads. The flowers make wine and jam. And the milky latex is a mosquito repellent and wart cure. '))
 drew and painted strange amoeboid creatures, insects, plants with human heads, and hallucinogenic flowers. According to a French website written in rather singular English, he was much influenced by the Medoc countryside of his childhood, where, it seems, \'the trees and the characters spout out the tender and wet mucilage formed by the ground.\' '))
