SCHERER, Diana - Nurture Studies - AS SIGNED COPY!

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With 'Nurture Studies' Diana SCHERER presents an archive of flowers that she has grown from seed over a period of six months. Instead of letting the flowers grow in open ground, she has forced each plant to develop inside a vase. Only at the end of the process does she remove the plant's corset, exposing roots that retain their shape as a reminder of the now missing vase.Her method is inherently contradictory. Although she devotes herself to the project and closely observes whether the roots are lying down and developing as desired, she carefully examines their ability to manipulate plant growth. This ability turns out to be limited; she has to accept the impossibility of total control. This contrast between almost obsessive surveillance and the inability to fundamentally influence events becomes an intense, almost ritualistic presence in her work.
The photos she produces are reminiscent of the illustrations in 17th century botanical encyclopedias, which depicted flower roots and all. Her work also has strong similarities to the plant books from the 1970s, in which houseplants were often arranged on a pedestal and set off with fabrics that added a romantic touch. Although Dsie clearly references these predecessors, she has no trouble avoiding the perceived coziness of the 'potted plant' genre. Her paintings are bare and unadorned. The careful observer will notice that most of the plants are far from perfect specimens. Brown edges and broken stems show that mortality is already noticeable. The leaves of the pink aster are already dying and other plants, such as dandelion and cow parsley, would not be worth a second glance at the roadside. Diana SCHERER treats them all as the same. The flower portraits are the successor to earlier photo series in which she opted for much rougher images, such as in 'Girls', where they lie on the ground with their backs to the camera - collapsed like rag dolls, so that viewers almost automatically see them as victims.
In 'Nurture Studies', confrontational imagery is more subtle: although the flowers with their exposed roots look as fragile as the girls, Diana SCHERER avoids any semblance of drama mainly through the objectivity of her photographic style, arranging the plants upright in the frame and photographing them with a technical camera. This approach is consistent with the orderly way in which collectors catalog their objects" (publisher's note, © Van Zoetendal Publisher, 2012)

About German photo artist Diana SCHERER (b.1971)

Photo books by as well as with works by Diana SCHERER