This photo series is the result of a collaboration with artist José Montealegre. The plants featured in these photos are sculptures, made from copper and based on drawings from a 16th century manuscript. The photos were used in a 2022 calendar that was issued as an edition linked to an exhibition at Klosterruine Berlin in august-september 2021.
Vivero Enredado is a photographic project in collaboration with José Montealegre, a Honduran artist living and working in Europe. His works are an interpretation of drawings belonging to a 16th century manuscript, depicting and describing the fauna and flora of the “West Indies”. It was written by a Spanish monk, Francisco Hernandez, who has traveled for seven years through what is currently knows as Mexico on a scientific expedition. In those days manuscripts were often compiled by colonising powers, based on second or third-hand information. Therefore rather than showing an accurate description of reality they show an interpretation of it.
By reconstructing the plants based on these illustrations, José Montealegre reappropriates an ancestral cultural legacy. Yet by transforming and interpreting the drawings, his sculptures become another abstraction of the original plants. The contrast between the organic form created by neatly sculpted shapes and the artificiality caused by their metallic shine confuses the observer. This confusion gives way to wonder and awe when the creator’s craftsmanship is taken up close. The photos of this series embody that perception. They are fragments depicting the eye of the observer, whether it’s a scholar studying the anatomy of a newly discovered plant or a photographer.
Yet every observation is an interpretation. This is as much the case when observing plants on another continent, to serve for the compilation of a manuscript, as when taking a photo of a situation. To incorporate this reflection, the photographic process for the creation of these pictures constituted out of different phases that each left a visible trace. First, the analogous phase left the imprint of craft and different chemical reactions from film to silver gelatine print. Second, the prints were digitised and colorised using an algorithm, leaving the final observation into the hands of artificial intelligence.
The result is a series of self-reflective photos of sculpted plants, depicting the view of the empirical observer while highlighting the interpretation of the sculptor and the transformation caused by the photographic process. Much like the initial drawings of the manuscript these photos are intended to evoke wonder and intrigue rather than to purely document the subjects. They could be seen as transformations of a past or a possible glimpse into a future. If the destruction of our planet keeps continuing at the current pace, the botanicals of the new world might actually become purely artificial.
