TITLE: Silver Herbarium

My project started when I was asked to make a visual catalogue of the plants in my childhood garden for archiving purposes. Inspiration of old scientific herbaria and my childhood game - drying flowers and leaves between pages of books, collecting them and later making appliqué postcards - led me to this approach of the image. While choosing wetplate collodion the images result even more sentimental. My Silver Herbarium has no scientific value as usually herbaria do. It is my personal sentiments and memories of childhood and way of seeing the beauty of plants. My Herbarium piece by piece constructs the whole garden - with flowers, weeds, vegetables, herbs and trees.

AUTHOR: Emilija Petrauskiene (Lithuania)

Born in 1981 in Vilnius. Now working as a family doctor. Art and later photography was always my field of interest besides studies and full time job. I started taking photographs more than 10 years ago all learning by myself and with online communities. The prime aim of learning how to shoot nice photos was to create beautiful family album, but all went further. Now using almost only analogue techniques I capture my everyday life and create Silver Herbarium. Analogue, slow photography is like a mindfullness for me. To set the camera, to compose image and to wait for the right moment. You can never hurry the process.