Banksia Bouquet
At first glance, Pamela Pauline’s sumptuous photographic artworks can easily be mistaken for paintings. That’s intentional. Her series of incredibly detailed creations featuring Australia’s endemic and endangered plants, flowers, and birds seeks to emulate seventeenth-century Dutch still-lifes, not only in style but also in the visual cues and symbolism hidden in them.
Pauline spends many hours photographing flora and fauna in their natural habitats near her home in Sydney and in wildlife refuges across the country. The species she can’t locate in the wild, she photographs at conservation gardens. Later, she digitally carves out specific elements from select photographs — say a single stem of fuzzy flannel flowers, a spiky yellow banksia, or a pair of superb fairy-wrens — and then painstakingly layers them together to create detailed arrangements set against a textured background. The final compositions, which often include vases placed on botanical books and hourglasses (an old metaphor for time running out), can showcase as many as 65 threatened plant species (e.g., Biophilia Bouquet, pictured above) and comprise more than 300 layers.
The work is certainly labor intensive. The 16 compositions that make up two of her most popular series, On the Brink and Fragile Beauty, Rich and Rare, for instance, took nearly two years of research and travel, more than 25,000 photographs, and countless hours at the computer to complete. But the process, Pauline says, is what gives her joy.
Learn more about the artist’s work at: pamelapauline.com.
Pauline is particularly interested in showcasing species that “occupy the lesser-known understory of plant communities” and the general public might not be familiar with. She points out that while Australia’s endangered animals (think koalas) receive a lot of media attention, at least three-quarters of the country’s threatened species are plants. Nearly all of her compositions, however, also feature birds — from endangered orange-bellied parrots, palm cockatoos, and regent honeyeaters, to more commonly seen Australian magpies and sulphur-crested cockatoos.
Each piece, the artist says, invites the viewer to celebrate the beauty of the flora and fauna of Australia, which has the highest rates of endemicity in the world, and also to reflect on the fact that without urgent action, this fragile beauty may soon be lost to us.
We don’t have a paywall because, as a nonprofit publication, our mission is to inform, educate and inspire action to protect our living world. Which is why we rely on readers like you for support. If you believe in the work we do, please consider making a tax-deductible year-end donation to our Green Journalism Fund.
DonateGet four issues of the magazine at the discounted rate of $20.