The images in the A Different Nature series are luminograms, created in the darkroom without a camera or film. A sheet of chromogenic paper – coated in yellow, magenta and cyan dyes – is exposed to light. Where a flower lies in the way, rays of certain wavelengths get caught in its fabric. These rays fail to register on the paper’s surface. The remaining particles reveal a colourful silhouette. Elsewhere, the light overload stains the sensitive emulsion: it turns pitch black.

Torn stems and crumpled petals present a faded figure dressed in flashy colours. It is an unlikely clash between fragility and vigour, the organic and the electric, mortality and durability. Not unlike chemical preservatives, the lush pigments bathe the withering buds in a state of fresh artificiality.

No two images are the same: the process prevents exact reproduction, as the flowers must be placed afresh when an additional print is made. Each strikes a unique pose in a chance encounter. And yet, unnervingly, the flowers are not as individual as their precarious silhouettes would suggest. Bought by the artist in shops, they are commodities. Mass produced on industrial estates, selected breeds, modified breeds, breeds bred on nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous. Out of factories these flowers were born as monsters – did they ever touch the ground?

For Lyons, photographic technology “grants access to a realm hidden from normal human vision”: it reveals unseen phenomena. In the face of technology, the unknown is reduced and increased at the same time; exotic plants are everywhere for us to buy, but do we know their names?

Cast in monstrous figures of light, these decaying blossoms will not rest; they will last.

Extracted from:

A Fantasised Bouquet

By Lucile du Praz

London

2010