Malaxis monophyllos- White Adder's Mouth 1931

Editor: Here we have Edwin Hale Lincoln’s “Malaxis monophyllos- White Adder's Mouth,” taken in 1931. It’s a gelatin silver print, so it has these amazing subtle tones. What strikes me is the sort of ghostly quality, like peering into a forgotten corner of a natural history museum. What do you make of it? Curator: Oh, "ghostly" is perfect! It's like he's captured not just the flower, but a little piece of the past along with it. And those gelatin silver prints—they've got this luminous quality, right? This makes the details shimmer. The adder's mouth orchid itself… did you know it's actually a pretty rare find? Editor: I didn’t know that. So, photographing them then was almost an act of preservation in itself? Curator: Absolutely! Lincoln had such a naturalist approach. Each of those slender stalks, like tiny, delicate conductors humming with life, tells a story, and what is the most interesting one? Editor: It's incredible how much texture he manages to capture, even in the soil. Curator: That's Lincoln's gift, that intense scrutiny. He finds this fragile beauty, then frames them to draw the eye… to make them undeniable. And, isn’t it fascinating how even in this stillness, there’s such a sense of vital movement? It feels ready to spring back to life, to sway. Editor: It really does. Seeing it like this makes me think differently about how we document nature. Not just as a record, but as an elegy almost? Curator: Exactly! It’s that mix—science and poetry. That bittersweet awareness of time passing. Editor: It’s like capturing the ephemeral, it fades the instant it blooms. Curator: Precisely. Thank you, that puts a point on everything in my opinion!