Flora

Since the Garden of Eden, humans have been seduced by plants. Around 25 works, all drawn from the collection of the Akron Art Museum, will survey the different approaches photographers have used to depict the plant world. Romance, sensualism or eroticism permeate floral still lifes by Imogen Cunningham, Mariana Yampolsky, Stephen Tomasko and André Kertesz. Daido Moriyama’s lush but flawed rose evokes the fleeting existence of physical beauty. Judith McMillan allows us to see the interior anatomy of plants in her x-ray photograms. Compositions featuring cut plants by Alma Lavenson and Baron Adolf de Meyer attempt to improve on nature’s aesthetic rigor. Jeannette Klute, a pioneer of dye transfer color photography, prefers portraying vegetation in its habitat, where it reveals the rhythms and interconnectedness of the natural world. Most of the works in the exhibition are making their Akron debut.