Illuminations: Ferns of Colombia

Illuminations: Miradas a los Helechos en Colombia is a photographic project documenting the present time of urgent plant discovery in an era of ecosystem disruption and social change.  This project developed from a research-based creative collaboration with Dr. Alejandra Vasco during my time as an artist affiliate at the Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT). I researched primary source materials housed in the BRIT Library and Herbarium, including Dr. Vasco’s plant voucher specimens from her study of Colombian ferns.  

The photographs capture chance visual relationships between drying ferns and the Colombian newspaper pages used to press them before their transfer to archival herbarium sheets. I am entranced by how this common preservation method simultaneously captures both the cultural and natural histories of Colombia. The dried ferns appear as ghostly silhouettes, emphasizing their environmental fragility and beauty as they float above the background of contemporaneous news.

Ferns were the dominant plants on Earth for millions of years before seed-bearing plants, developing remarkable adaptations to extreme conditions over time. Their resilience in the face of environmental change, stemming from their largely unexplored genetic diversity, points to an optimistic future in which ecosystem rescue and revival may be possible.