Habenaria macrophylla- Large Round-leaved Orchid 1931

Edwin Hale Lincoln made this photograph of a Large Round-leaved Orchid sometime in his life, using a camera, lens and photographic paper. It's so interesting to think about the image as a kind of performance, where light and time are the real materials. The grayscale gives the image a ghostly feel, like a memory fading at the edges. Look at the texture, it is almost like a drawing with light, with such fine detail in the petals of the orchid. It’s all about capturing the ephemeral, a moment when the flower is perfectly itself, and the light is just so. Notice the variations in tone and contrast, it brings out the subtle curves and textures of each petal and stem. This photo reminds me of the work of Karl Blossfeldt, who also used photography to create very close studies of plants in the early twentieth century. Both artists highlight the underlying abstract structures of the natural world. This image is about attention and how we look at the world around us.