Nick Knight

Nick Knight is most known as a contemporary fashion photographer, and is responsible for filling our minds with iconic imagery. He's worked with a huge variety of leading designers over the last three decades, however amongst his prolific working career he has also worked on a variety of personal projects, one of these being 'Flora'. 'Flora' has been hugely inspiring for me over this unit. The way he has isolated the subject invites you to scrutinise the detail. Each print is individually photographed almost as if he has photocopied them, the subjects are all cut up, and laid out in a certain order as if we are judging them. Its an unnatural environment for the plants and flowers to be shown in. Stereotypically this way of displaying imagery on a page would be avoided, the photos have no weight. They hold a sense of presence but absolutely no form of space, their existence is questionable because to a certain extent the viewer will struggle to judge the scale, weight, and even texture.

However Knight has somewhat managed to capture this incredible simplicity within the works, each specimen does not need anymore explanation then what is described from the camera, within my work I have idolised this ability to capture the presence, when working observationally with my own organic structures I want to gather a similar amount of detail. The lack of perspective within each of his images allows the viewer full focus on the complexity of detail. By Knight removing the specimens from the natural environment we usually associate them in. It has educated the viewer into understanding the beauty of these structures when they stand alone.

Clearly Knight works in a very different way to myself, however since coming across 'Flora' I have tried to gain some of his love for detail, however using graphite rather then a camera. I will never gain the elements of detail he can out of a lens, however with precision and a strong hand I have been recreating with delicacy and time some of the organic structures I have previously documented from Fletcher Moss.