A handbook of weeds

 

All the way from Tasmania comes Felix Wilson's 'A Handbook of Weeds',  a crisply designed collection of pictures of weeds. Shot by night time, bombarded by flash light, these pictures are, in fact, the exact opposite of a handbook. Instead of pointing out the generic the pictures all show shapes that are wild, unruly, grotesque and antithetical to reductionism. No L-systems here: these are dramatic assemblages of plants and their backgrounds, weeds as textural noise, twigs and branches waving in the night, Blair Witch style: there is a lot of black in these pictures. Never did a blackberry plant look so theatrical. The use of artificial light sometimes creates depth in what is almost flat, like when a single plant seems to consist of various layers, and sometimes it creates a flatness in what in broad daylight would be a three-dimensional structure. I hope I make myself clear. To top it off it comes attached with a bag of seeds and the only text are four lines of TS Elliot. What more do you want?