Patterns from Nature Photographic Collage, c. 1945
© Conde Nast, Horst Estate
I am fascinated by plant’s natural beauty and their diverse forms, colours, shapes, structure, textures and patterns. In my A-Level Photography studies I conducted a personal investigation of plant life photography by researching botanical master photographers such as Man Ray, Karl Blossfeldt and Imogen Cunningham. So therefore imagine my surprise when I visited the Horst exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, that Horst P. Horst, the famed fashion photographer, had also photographed plants (as well as shells, rocks and butterfly wings), the likes of which had never made my radar during my investigations!
As part of the V&A Horst: Photography of Style exhibition there is a series of unusual, kaleidoscopic and abstract works by this master photographer have been brought together displaying a collection of rarely seen and unpublished images from Horst’s archives. The images are not ones you may be expecting from Horst, that is the characteristic high glamour fashion and celebrities shots he is best known for. However, in 1946 Horst did publish a book called Patterns from Nature which contained close-ups of black-and-white images of plants, shells and minerals. Horst wrote in the Preface of his book, “The resulting patterns are immediately applicable to industrial fields such as textiles, wallpaper, carpets, plastics, glass, ceramics, china, leather, book-binding, and jewellery” – and that is exactly what the V&A Museum has done by creating this tote bag as part of the merchandising supporting this exhibition.
His natural world images were taken in the USA using natural lighting (without the use of his infamous studio lighting), 5 x 4 inch Graflex View camera and a Rolleiflex camera using 2¼ x 2¼ inch negatives. The images are of close-up shots of natural specimens that are photographed out of their natural setting. He has concentrated on their design and natural form and the influences of the botanical photographer, Karl Blossfeldt can clearly be seen. Horst said “I had known and admired Karl Blossfeldt’s wonderful photographs of plants, and their revelation of the similarity of vegetable forms to arts forms like wrought iron and Gothic architecture” . Multiple contact prints of the same image were then gathered into simple, repeatable patterns to create beautiful and intricate kaleidoscopic-like images.
I was influenced by Horst to create these patterns for myself using some of my own close-up shots of flowers but using today’s technology of Photoshop’s layers and image rotation functionality. Flowers have great patterns that recur naturally like spirals, arrays, and symmetries and they are the perfect specimens to create reflections and geometric patterns. I took the shots by getting in very close, isolating parts of the flowers using a less conventional crop and then converted the files into black-and-white using Photoshop. I then created digital collages from these images by rotating them vertically and horizontally to get the kaleidoscope effect. Here are some of my experiments…
© Hayley Salmon
- BARNES, M., 2014. Horst: Patterns from Nature. London: Merrell Publishers
- BROWN, S., (2014). Horst: Photography of Style [viewed 16 November 2014]. Exhibited London: V&A Museum
- V&A MUSEUM, 2014. Horst: Photographer of Style – About the Exhibition [online] [viewed 16 November 2014].Available from: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/exhibition-horst-photographer-of-style/about-the-exhibition/
- V&A SHOP, 2014. V&A Horst Patterns from Nature Tote Bag [online] [viewed 16 November 2014]. Available from: http://www.vandashop.com
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Visual Exploration 