If you don't know much about photography, you might expect that taking pictures of flowers would be the easiest of all jobs.
The thing is already beautiful, right? It doesn't move or hide like wildlife. It doesn't need coaxing, like people. You don't need to wait hours for the elements to perfectly cohere, as with landscape or astrophotography. So where's the challenge?
If that's you, and you think of floral photography as a safe and boring option, then this book wants you to think again. Published by Shutter Hub Editions this October, Flora is a photobook that gathers 100 images from photographers across the UK.
Each was asked to interpret plant life in whatever way they wanted. The results vary enormously, from traditional cyanotypes to ethereal Polaroid experiments, and are light-years apart from the standard bouquet or rose bush compositions you might be expecting.
The original brief read: "We’d love to see compelling, thoughtful, and visually striking photography that explores the diversity, resilience, subtleties, and poetry of growing things – from mosses and ferns to wild forests, blossoms, vines, roots, and every form of vegetation in between.
"Show us images that reveal the nuance of growth, the patterns of nature’s processes, and the quiet power of plant life in all environments."
Well, the photographic community has definitely delivered on all of that.
Some have drawn on 19th-century printing techniques. John Brewer's cyanotype of an acer leaf turns a familiar autumn shape into a deep Prussian-blue silhouette, while Michael Croghan's Bog Revival uses the same process to render bog plants as ghostly pale forms against near-black.
Elsewhere, Paeony Lewis works with lumen prints, a technique that exposes photo paper directly to sunlight, producing warm, painterly tones that look more like watercolors than standard photographs.
Equally experimental, Maria Mademyr's lumen print of rowan leaves glows amber and gold in a composition that feels very "abstract art", while Kieran McPeake works with Polaroid SX-70 film to produce a soft, dreamlike distortion. Then there's Steve Pill, who provides the book's cover image: roses abandoned on a London street, wilting.
This willingness to be playful, to experiment, to find a different take on familiar subjects, is at the heart of this book's appeal.
Whether you're looking at weeds pushing through sidewalks, wildflower meadows in flat, atmospheric light, or studio shots that treat leaves and stems more like specimens than decoration, there are endless ways it seems to reinterpret the floral world.
In that light, you don't necessarily need to be interested in flowers to enjoy this book: anyone looking to stop their practice from getting stale and get some new visual ideas will find it packed with fresh inspiration.
Flora is available to preorder now ahead of its publication on October 26, with copies sold through Shutterhub and stockists including the Photographers' Gallery in London and Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool.
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