The Alchemist's Tree
Set in New England in the years 1891-1903, The Alchemist's Tree tells the story of three scientists determined to recreate earth's first plants by grafting together the pieces, pollen, and cells of modern botanical species. Comprised of portrait and "still life" photographs from the late nineteenth-century laboratory, this artist's book and its accompanying exhibition complicate distinctions traditionally made between art and nature.
Whereas art is ordinarily a celebration of man's creative hand and nature reveals the beauty of the world untouched, here the plant forms are the result of the botanists' interventional tinkering in the development of nature. Whereas technological developments that propel the making of art are often countered by nostalgic reactions within more traditional media, here photography, the advanced technology of the Victorian era, is applied to capture a Victorian-era effort to reconstruct the natural world of antiquity.
In The Alchemist's Tree, distinctions between art and science collapse. Both have the power to evoke multiple temporalities: ancient times, the recent past, and the contingencies of the present. Here we are reminded that both the photograph and the plant rely on light--the one to stabilize the image, the other to grow. Their relationship within this photographed botanical world addresses the desirability of both stability and change.
Whereas art is ordinarily a celebration of man's creative hand and nature reveals the beauty of the world untouched, here the plant forms are the result of the botanists' interventional tinkering in the development of nature. Whereas technological developments that propel the making of art are often countered by nostalgic reactions within more traditional media, here photography, the advanced technology of the Victorian era, is applied to capture a Victorian-era effort to reconstruct the natural world of antiquity.
In The Alchemist's Tree, distinctions between art and science collapse. Both have the power to evoke multiple temporalities: ancient times, the recent past, and the contingencies of the present. Here we are reminded that both the photograph and the plant rely on light--the one to stabilize the image, the other to grow. Their relationship within this photographed botanical world addresses the desirability of both stability and change.
