Flower: Christopher Beane

Description

This is a dazzling, sensuous celebration of color and form by the photographer whom "Architectural Digest" described as 'the love child of Georgia O'Keeffe and Robert Mapplethorpe'. 'When I agreed to write an essay for Beane's book', recounts Anthony F. Janson, esteemed curator and professor, 'I had no idea I would be writing about one of the greatest photographers I have ever run across. It was easy enough for me to locate his position in the history of photography and art as a whole. I saw its importance immediately. Such an approach hardly begins to meet the challenge of explaining his work'. With intensity, vision, and expressiveness Christopher Beane captures the beauty, and the bizarre, of the botanical. He concentrates on the overlooked detail: the veins of dehydrated petals, the textures of poppy stamens, the infinite compositions vines create, and the multiple layers that constitute a ranunculus. In 150 photographs, "Flower" explores the precious and perishable nature of flowers - seed pods burst open, withered leaves curl, and frilly petals unfurl. Anthony F. Janson contributes a rich and engaging overview of the core ideas that define Beane's art, offering the reader a context for thinking about this unique work, while he chronicles its development. A thing of beauty, "Flower" is the gift book everyone will welcome - a testament to the remarkable talent of Christopher Beane and his passionate vision.

Christopher Beane is a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design and has a background in portrait and figurative photography. After stumbling into a job in New York City's bright and offbeat flower market, Beane became obsessed with the botanical. This retrospective of his explorations over the last 12 years captures floral expression at its most remarkable.

"His photographs transforms flowers and plants into something remarkably unexpected---- shapes that dazzle and confound in equal measure." - House & Garden"