Courtesy of Yale Undergraduate Art Gallery

Images ranging from the early history of the medium to the contemporary reveal both scientific and creative interpretations of nature. Curated by Judy Ditner, the associate curator of Photography and Digital Media, the installation opened last November in the James E. Duffy Gallery on the fourth floor of the YUAG.

The installation follows the technological progression of the medium — a relatively young art form — from contact and darkroom prints to Polaroid and digital prints. According to its visitors, the gallery offers images that locate the human experience in the natural world. 

“[The dandelion orbs] are all there, hovering, together, held in space above their collective shadow,” said Kristin Eno, about Ryuji Taira’s “Bound.” “Taira’s photograph offers us a rememory of what is both the most mundane natural form and that which holds within all our childhood longings and future hopes.” 

The earliest image in the installation is “Dicksonia arborescens, Jamaica” (Ca.1850) by the British botanist Anna Atkins. It is a facsimile of her original cyanotype of a cutting from a Saint Helena tree fern. 

One visitor, Kristin Eno, was taken with this print. 

“The Anna Atkins piece drew me in and time slowed down,” she said. “I was transported back to the wonderful Atkins exhibition at the New York Public Library a few years back, which had changed me when it washed my dreams of the natural world in blue.”

The British photographer found the medium to be a more precise method of rendering natural subject matter — with a camera, Atkins was able to better capture minute details of natural forms. 

Adjacent to her print is William Henry Fox Talbot’s “Jacaranda Mimosifolia” (1857), a photographic engraving from a steel plate. It depicts the delicate foliage of a sub-tropical tree. 

Talbot himself was highly influential to the history of photography and explored images on light sensitive paper, making him one of the pioneers of darkroom work. 

Photography’s ability to reproduce incredible detail is also evident in Karl Blossfeldt’s black and white gelatin silver print, “Symphphytum Officinale (Common Comfrey),” ca. 1898-1930, printed in 1976. 

There are innumerable fine hairs on the plant, which is presented in dramatic tension with the horizontal framing — full of life and ready to burst into bloom. Blossfeldt was one of the leading photographers of the modernist New Objectivity movement of the early 20th century.

Ryuji Taira’s platinum-palladium print “Bound” (2014) drew the attention of numerous visitors. The small print is not easy to resolve at a distance.

“I was drawn to it because I saw these round shapes grouped together and had a good sense of these spheres,” said Kenneth Morford, an assistant professor at the Yale School of Medicine. 

He continued, “But when I got closer, I realized they were dandelion heads and could fall apart at any minute. I could see light streaming through them with shadows falling underneath.”

“Sunflower and Sardines, from Sardines, from the portfolio Eat” (1990), Michiko Kon’s gelatin silver print, is another work that requires careful observation. 

From across the gallery, it seems to be a tonally beautiful still life of the ordinary. However, upon closer inspection, one will notice that what appeared to be sunflower seeds in the head of the flower are actually a multitude of sardine eyes. 

Four sardine tails are interspersed among the petals.  A surrealist sensibility is at work in this print.

Sunflowers are a recurrent motif in the installation, including DoDo Jin Ming’s “#5 Blois, France from the Series Sunflower” (1994) — a negative chromogenic print. It captures a field of sunflowers against a slanting horizon line. 

The sunflower stalks extend to the top of the frame, their large heads drooping downward at the end of the growing season, seeding the ground for next year’s crop.

Martine Gutierrez’s chromogenic self-portrait, “Masking, Red Spathe Mask from the series Indigenous Woman” (2018), critiques advertising tropes to explore identity and deconstruct the industry’s objectification of sex. 

Mocking the typical spa mask, she has placed fruit over her nose and mouth. Covering her eyes are two intense red spathes, the fleshy leaves that attract pollinators to certain plants. 

Visitor Gale Zucker said that she enjoyed this print because “it combines natural elements with the human figure in a way that has more depth to it in terms of intent.”

Other works in this installation include prints by Edward Steichen, Chuck Close, Andy Warhol and Mitch Epstein. 

Viewers can plan to attend Photography and the Botanical world through June 8, 2025. 

Correction, Feb. 4: The previous version of the article misspelled Zucker’s first name.