Author Description

"The book focuses on natural-history imagery in the mid-nineteenth century, with particular emphasis on the botanical drawings and photograms by the artist Anna Atkins (1799-1871) and her Victorian contemporaries." "In addition to providing a feast for the eyes, the book illuminates shifts in the way the natural world was represented. In the mid-1800s, the advent of photography provided new possibilities, generating as much creative fervor as digital media have in recent years. In addition to handmade drawings, hand-colored prints, nature prints (direct imprints from plants), and natural illustrations (real specimens mounted on the page), artists began making photogenic drawings (as William Henry Fox Talbot first dubbed his early photographs) to record botanical specimens. A kind of "drawing with light," this new art form complemented, rather than superseded, the other forms of graphic media. Far from rendering conventional approaches obsolete, it encouraged experimentation with all kinds of media." "Ocean Flowers demonstrates how this concept of "fluidity" in crossing the traditional borders between media is paralleled in the contemporary art world. Replete with two hundred color illustrations, the book accompanies an exhibition of the same name organized by The Drawing Center in New York in association with the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut. More than just an exhibition catalogue, it includes essays by the coeditors, as well as by the artist Craigie Horsfield and scholars Edward Eigen, Elaine Scarry, and Kathryn A. Tuma."--BOOK JACKET.