An Alternative View of Nature
Deciding to look much closer at nature on my walks, I took it upon myself to start collecting. In the same way old botanists used to collect plants in order to study and classify them. I used my flower press to preserve them, which I thought would allow me to press them and observe their shapes, patterns and textures – maybe even drawing from the collection.
However, I soon realised that the specimens themselves are so delicate and intricate on their own, that drawing from the pressed plants seemed inadequate and pointless. So I pushed myself to think back to the microscopic slides at the Grant Museum, and realised that what I needed to do was change my perspective of looking at the plants. I needed to look closer, really zooming in on the many different aspects I hoped to find, and the best way of doing that was by buying a microscope and putting my pressed plants underneath it.
I loved how this way of viewing my plants made me see them different, rather than whole objects of a recognisable plant, I saw them abstracted and as shapes, patterns and textures, which reminded me somewhat of images of cells or bacteria. Although, one major drawback from using this digital microscope, was that it was relatively cheap, thus the image quality isn’t amazing and at times it was hard to get the camera to focus. But with that aside, I found that this added to the images in a way because the out of focus areas and poor quality added a layer of sinister depth to the nature observed.
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Reanne Bolah 