Flora

The young British photographer Nick Knight discovered the beauty of dried plants on a stroll through the herbarium, the "library of pressed flowers", at the Natural History Museum in London. These flowers were a source of such fascination to the photographer that he has now devoted his second large photo album to them. The charm of their fragile corporeality, their filigree transparency and their subtle colours have delighted Nick Knight for more than three and a half years - the time it took him to select from the over six million plants in the herbarium the photographs for this album. Thousands were considered, several hundred photographed and finally the forty-six "most beautiful" chosen. The entire book is imbued with the aesthetic happiness Nick Knight experienced himself on his photographic journey of discovery and whose effect he described in these words: "These are few things that make one happier than discovering a new way of seeing the familiar. Seeing in a way I could not have imagined. It is a very liberating feeling and one that makes me very optimistic." Sandra Knapp, curator of the plants of Middle America at the Natural History Museum has written short explanatory texts on the individual plants commenting on their biological characteristics as well as on their historical and cultural importance. The way the author weaves into her text a short history of botany, botanical research and techniques as well as a history of the herbarium makes this book a pleasure to read and is indispensable for all those who are interested in botany as a scientific discipline.