Bruissements végétaux

This exhibition by Centre de la photographie in its new venue at Bibliothèque de Genève, in Parc des Bastions, pays hommage to the history of the building and its Art nouveau style, and of the park that surrounds it, which was Geneva’s first botanical garden. With the works of Saskia Gronexberg, Yann Gross, Yann Haeberlin, Felicity Hammond, Hilla Kurki, Yann Mingard, Lea Sblandano, Berit Schneidereit, Bernard Tullen, Magdalena Wysocka & Claudio Pogo, and Geneva’s Botanical Garden, it explores our often paradoxical relationships with the plant world, and the ways in which plants become in turn objects of affection thanks to their aesthetic qualities, signals and symbols of environmental upheaval, the embodiment of sustainable consumption, or perform aesthetic or symbolic functions.

The notions of study and of typology permeate the entire history of photography, particularly when it is used in the service of science or for documentary purposes. From the cyanotypes of algae made by the English botanist Anna Atkins to the enlargements of plant details by the German artist Karl Blossfeldt and the contemporary botanical illustrations by the British photographer Niki Simpson, plant studies and typologies abound. Since the 1840s, photographers have made major contributions to the development of botanical knowledge, and to our visual culture of the plant world. Bringing together intimate narratives, scientific documentation, speculative explorations, and everyday observation, this exhibition presents a multitude of contemporary botanical studies. It aims to capture some of the complex meanings of plants in today’s cultural context.