Diane Scherer was born in Germany and studied fine art and photography in Amsterdam, where she now resides. According to the Time and Space website, she is interested in exploring "the relationship man has with his environment and his desire to control nature." As her body of work attests, she has long been interested in floral subjects (although not exclusively). In the past several years, she has become increasingly intrigued with plant root systems and their "hidden, underground processes."
The first two photographs are from her series, "Harvest," produced in conjunction with botanists at the Radboud University Nijmegen. Plant roots reminded her of different kinds of yarn, from fine silk to heavy wool. With the scientists, she created "a tapestry and fabric" of roots, and took a wonderful series of photographs of the results. (Don't even ask me how they did it, because I have no idea!)
The second two photographs are from the "Nurture Studies" series, in which Scherer plays botanist, gardener, collector, and photographer, again playing with the idea of controlling the natural world. For these pieces, Scherer plants seeds of flowers and weeds from her garden and allows the roots to develop over a period of months. Once they have fully developed, she breaks the containers holding them before photographing the resulting plant-root-container system.
What I love about both these series, aside from their simple aesthetic value (I find them beautiful), is the way in which Scherer has played with the idea of controlling natural processes to a specific, aesthetically pleasing end. But the truth is that she has captured each system (root, flower) at its moment of optimum aesthetic value - left on their own to continue to grow, the patterns she produced would be destroyed by the same forces that produced them in the first place. So part of the appeal of each creation is its inherent fragility and transience.
Working on my presentation over the last week helped me refocus my attention on the idea of "nature disposes," and helped me articulate the aesthetics of the photographs I want to make. I would like to build a series around the old power station in South Norfolk, but focusing less on place and more on the idea of "nature disposing" of our power and information infrastructure - the things we most use to try to control nature and to maintain our own enthalpy in the face of nature's natural entropy. Such a series could include images of the power plant, telephone poles and lines, and electric and cell phone towers. Structures like these appeal to my sense of geometry as well as my love of rust and flaking paint, and might also reveal the hidden treasures and interesting juxtapositions I most enjoy sharing through my photographs.
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