The Language of flowers - Final Integrated Assignment

After much deliberation I have come up with a new concept for the end of year exhibition, part of the London exhibition and F.I.A. Following themes from previous assignment I chose to research the area of Flora. This has led to the fascinating language of flowers. Before technology took over the act of courting an admirer was far more subtle. The use of flowers could be used to contact an admirer to make your intentions clear. This was the art of Floriography which became extremely popular in the Victorian period. Thought to have originated in Turkey in the 17th Century as a way for illiterate concubine women to communicate. This then developed into the secret language of flowers when visiting ladies of Europe took an interest in the subject. This culminated in Louise Cortambert writing the believed first book of meaning of flowers, called Le Language des Fleurs. In 1884 Jean Marsh wrote a book called The Language of Flowers which was illustrated by Kate Greenaway, which became the standard source of Victorian flower meanings.




Today we have forgotten many of these hidden meanings apart from the obvious, the red rose, meaning passion, the symbol of many a valentines message.
It was this obvious symbol that caught my interests. My wife had recently shown me a dried rose that she  had kept from the valentines day I asked her for her hand. The rose has even more importance to us as it's 25 years ago that I gave her this rose.  I took the image below to see if this could be a concept of interest.

For some time I have been wanting to capture images that have been influenced by Nick Night's book Flora, but put my own twist on it. Knight was drawn to the beauty of the pressed flowers at the National History museum. This project took him three and a half years to complete choosing 46 visually stunning samples from a possible six million.


 I'm drawn to his approach, using a high key background light where the flat object is laid on top.

Conclusion

I was really pleased with the outcome of the rose image. This has provided the confidence to further investigate the possibilities of this project. This may not be the way I will finally present the images as I want to try both the Gum Bichromate process and Fuji Polaroid lifts.