The photographic world of Paul den Hollander (1950 Breda, Holland) has its source of inspiration in nature, in museum collections, in a garden, in constant experimentation. A photographer and gardener, of himself he says that he does not know what comes first for him in his life experience, whether gardening or photography. In his work he is constantly searching for beauty, which is always bound up with the mystery and life force, life and death, darkness and light, in the infinite range of colours that changes with the days and the seasons. Paul den Hollander has this facet of a contemplative artist but comes from a significant tradition of documentary photographer.
In this exhibition, structured in three sections, he sets out three different views of nature with the series “Voyage botanique, 1992-1994”, “Metamorphosis, 2004-2007”, and “The Luminous Garden, 2010-2011”.
Voyage botanique, 1992-1994
While in Barcelona for the collective exhibition “Musa Museu” at the Palau de la Virreina in 1992, Paul den Hollander discovered the Salvador Collection and, inspired by this 17th-century herbarium, set off on a journey around Europe to trace the principal collections that were similar to those on which Linnaeus’ Philosophia botanica (1751) was based: Amsterdam, Paris, Geneva. His publication Voyage botanique (Breda, 1997) consists of images of the herbaria of Linnaeus’ time, framed by the Salvador herbarium
Metamorphosis, 2004-2007
Inspiration in the garden is a tradition common to many famous photographers. In this series of works, Paul den Hollander closely examines the vegetable environment closest to him. Totally inspired by his garden, he plays with two parameters inherent to photography: motion and blur. In the images seen in this series, a mysterious plant, insinuated among blotches of colour, describes its discovery and its moment of creation, of necessity brief and ephemeral, but captured for our eyes thanks to photographic expertise and precise control of the shutter.
The Luminous Garden, 2010-2011
In this series the photographer combines parts of plants with electromagnetic fields to show an unknown reality of flowers, which respond with their own unique patterns of light. The images obtained through these energy exchanges disrupt our conventional view of the physical world. It is an adventure in consciousness and perception. Paul den Hollander creates an unseen experience of “reality” filtered through scientific techniques and artistic intervention. Yet perhaps what he observes is related to the recent discovery that some pollinators detect electrical fields, imperceptible to us, in the flowers they visit. Once again, the sensitivity of the artist pre-empts scientific discovery