katinka matson: twelve flowers

a source of fascination for me are the colours, shapes, and textures of plants, and especially their flowers. the incredible variety in petal colour, leaf structure, and the way in which plants organize their bodies leaves me breathless. look inside the flower of a lily and enter a mystery defined by form, colour, and shadow. look at a petal on any plant and wonder at the spectacular detail revealed in the many speckles and hues and shades that at a distance - even a metre, disappear. think of the complex chemical processes that would be required to convert sunlight, water, and nutrients from the earth into that complexity.

for this reason, people who photograph flowers and capture their beauty in detail, hold my attention. i know from my own experience that it is not a simple matter to work in close proximity with plants. they are often so fragile and sensitive to any sort of movement that capturing the fraction of a moment in their lives is filled with challenge.

today i would like to feature the work of a woman who has taken advantage of technology in order to bring the detailed beauty of flowers into our experience and in so doing, created a new genre of representation.

her name is katinka matson.

in her artist's statement matson writes that “... new technologies equal new perceptions. We create tools and then mould ourselves through our use of them.”

contrary to what you might be expecting, her work uses no cameras - it’s non-photographic. what she has come up with is a technique utilizing input through a flatbed ccd scanner. (for more information on how a ccd scanner works have a look here.

katinka describes the process of scanning these images as a melding of naturalism and technology.

“The process involves scanning flowers and other natural objects on an open-top scanner from underneath the objects with a slow-moving sensor. This technique involves both new hardware (the scanner and the inkjet printer), and software (Adobe Photoshop). Without the distortion of the lens, highly detailed resolution is uniform throughout the image, regardless of the size of the printable media. The lighting effects from the sliding sensor beneath the object, coupled with overhead effects involving lighting and movement, result in a 3-D-like imaging of intense sharpness and detail.”

a gallery of images collectively entitled ”forty flowers” shows an artist at play, exploring the possibilities.

her current work has to my eyes a more considered aesthetic. in its juxtaposition of multiple images of the same type of flower, it appears more refined while infinitely richer in its capturing the presence of the plant’s essence. katinka draws the plant’s organizational structure - its rhythm - to the forefront, compelling the viewer to relate to the plant in a wholly different manner. in scanning each image for difference there is something more intimate in recognizing the individual plant’s uniqueness. i hope that you have time to have a long look at her current work entitled ”twelve flowers”.

matson’s homepage contains links to older work as well as links to print editions. if you are interested, kevin kelly has written a powerful and thorough introduction to her work.