While plants are intrinsically beautiful, I find the spaces in which they are cultivated, sold, and eventually planted even more visually compelling. The world of commercial plant production reveals patterns, shapes and structures that contrast with the organic properties of individual plants. I am drawn to the artificiality of these “natural” spaces. Within the controlled environments of the greenhouse and garden center, for example, water is delivered in precise amounts, soils are soil-less, cactus and orchids cohabitate, and light is diffused and distributed evenly.
This work documents the multibillion dollar industry that generates these products of the soil, an industry that helps to define our experience of the natural world in suburban and urban settings. Less landscape photographs than photographs about the construction of landscapes, these images draw upon my previous work in still-life photography where arrangement, whether aesthetic or functional, is an essential principle. The pictures reflect the tension between the exuberance of nature and the human desire to arrange and contain it.
