Artists on the loose

What happens when 16 artists from the U.S. and Europe are invited to express the garden in photography? An extraordinary traveling exhibition collected into this massive catalog that is, itself, a work of fine art.

There are otherworldly alliums, austere allees, narrow branches bursting with buds and flowers that dissolve into saturated color -- landscapes and plants made theatrical, hallucinatory, edgy and more beautiful by the camera and the artist’s imagination and technique.

A poetic introduction sets historical garden photography in context with the work and intent of each modern contributor, and essays examine the spiritual and symbolic side of gardens.

Ultimately, lead author and exhibit curator Padon writes, the garden emerges as “a place of inherent contradiction ... of beauty born of brutal force, a place of repose requiring constant maintenance.”

*

-- Lili Singer