Baril, Tom: Botanica

First Edition

2000

Tom Baril's floral photographs build on a long tradition of botanical studies. Baril's images visually take us to places once visited by nineteenth-century and modernist practitioners like Adolphe Braun, Man Ray, and Irving Penn. However, Baril distinguishes his own work from that of his forebears by solarizing Polaroid film, and using unique toning techniques.
Botanica is Tom Baril's second monograph and follows his self-titled book from 1997. Botanica reproduces sixty of Baril's flora images in a large format design that echoes the scale of his print, and harkens back to the early illustrated books of the nineteenth century and such classic tomes as the now-legendary Urformen der Kunst (1928) by Karl Blossfeldt.