I just love it when people have clever ideas that make me laugh but also speak to a deeper issues. This was certainly the case when I came across the work of Anne Percoco, who got her inspiration to create an imaginary herbarium from floral images printed on the packaging of every day items.

Drawings of Fantastical Flora Adapted from Advertising

Percoco: “These range from abstract little leaf icons used on packaging to indicate the product is eco-friendly in some way, to leaf and tree-shaped, chemical-laden air fresheners, to fake Christmas trees, which are abundant this time of year. Once I started looking for them, I saw them everywhere.”

Why observe real nature when you can look at a fake one? Alluding to nature to sell products seems to work, never mind that it is a cleaned-up, stylized, concocted one in many cases. The art work makes us think.

In itself it’s inventive, indeed, but so are the names the artist gives her specimens – that alone must have been a hoot, the latin cat and dog included (check out the silhouettes taken from pet food bags.)

For my Philly and NYC peeps: here is where you can catch the exhibit if you’re up for a trip to Jersey City…

Parallel Botany: The Study of Imaginary Plantscontinues at Casa Colombo (380 Monmouth Street, Jersey City) through February 26, 2019.

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I just despise it when people have clever ideas that make me cry but also speak to deeper issues. Tears of envy, I hasten to add – for want of traveling the world. SF based Photographer Beth Moon did so for 14 years to capture images of the oldest and rarest trees on earth. For me the work draws attention to what we are putting at risk with our absence of environmental protection – in an interview she seemed to be more keen on documenting what is before it decays, but who knows…https://mymodernmet.com/beth-moon-interview-ancient-trees/

The outcome is stunning work, in b&w duotone for the trees photographed during day time and in color for the same or similar trees at night. These are analog, not digital prints, extensive work with palladium added in the darkroom, requiring real skill in addition to the eye she has.

Nocturnal Photographs of the World’s Oldest Trees

Fake nature, real nature: Liszt’s imagined nature shall complete the trio. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6VHPJZdSJIh

Feux Follets are the ghostlike sparks of light you see on the ground in the moors and forests of Northern Europe. Images today are from an older series of that name, where I combined my photographs of German trees with lights of sorts.