Gathering

Gathering consists of photograms printed from reproductions culled from the 1613 botanical publication, Florilegium by botanist Basilius Besler. The photogram method produces ghostly negatives from the black and white positive prints. By cutting, overlaying, recombining the plant imagery to upend the original intent of the prints as scientific recordings of prime examples of various species, obscuring their instrumental or decorative functions. Through the provisional and experimental photogram process the botanicals take on almost occult appearance which visually aligns them with the sometimes ritual, apothecary, and spiritual function of plants in the early-modern period.

The title, Gathering, references the age of exploration desire to collect examples of plants throughout the world for scientific knowledge in the service of economic exploitation, medicinal applications, and expansion of empires. It also is a reference to the idea of an occult gathering. In Bressler’s era many still believed the existence of witches gathering together in the shadows and using their powers over the natural world to corrupt, deceive, and undermine patriarchal order. Labeling and categorizing are elemental functions of power and domination, extending to both identifying the useful and exemplar parts of the natural world and rounding up and weeding out the deviant, irrational, or unsanctioned practices and individuals in the social realm.