by Audrey Sage
We have added a luscious book by Linda Connor to our collection. Linda Connor is an American photographer and artist living in Northern California. Her work has taken her to remote parts of the globe, and her photographs consider the relationship of the sacred to the natural world and reflect her interest in traditional cultures.
“She has been an active force in the photography community and an esteemed instructor at the San Francisco Art Institute for fifty-three years. In 2002, she founded the non-profit Photo Alliance to expand and strengthen the Bay Area photography community through a renowned lecture series, portfolio reviews, and workshops.”
“She is most known for her large-format images, though there is a lesser-known body of work than the camera-based images. She has long held a deep fascination with altered books and collage, though the majority of her work is done during travels, her collage projects offer the perfect home-based endeavor.”
She describes her delight in finding in a local antique shop “a small, charming book, a German publication likely from the 1930s, with beautiful botanical illustrations. It found a place on a shelf in my library, among other small volumes, where they could easily be picked up and enjoyed. It was beguiling with its detailed floral illustrations, and then, there were the bugs, their partners in life! A tropical life!”
This special find by Connor was a book by Maria Sibylla Merian, a German naturalist, entomologist, and illustrator who showed a keen interest in observing and depicting nature from a young age. At the age of thirty-eight, Merian relocated from Germany to the Netherlands. After a divorce in 1699, at the age of fifty-two, she embarked on a journey to Suriname in South America with her second daughter. For two years, she meticulously observed and illustrated insects and plants in the Surinamese Amazon. Upon her return to Amsterdam, she published Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium (1705), which created a significant impact in the field of natural science. Transcending the limitations imposed on women of her era, she is now being re-evaluated as an artist who left an unparalleled legacy as both a naturalist and a painter with delicate and creative talents.
Linda Connor states, “This little book keeps revealing and unlocking so many uncanny elements. My fear and revulsion of insects drew me in, but it was the jungle and its fecundity and rank physicality that motivated the diversity of collage elements: butterflies, snakes, anatomical illustrations, and more. I went about this process intuitively and continue to find so much richness to be discovered.”
“Books clearly have the power to transport, illustrative books often more so. I came to Maria Sibylla Merian’s The Little Book of Tropical Wonders visually. I did not know about her work or life but was charmed by her paintings, both her illustrative skill and beautiful details. Though personally repulsed by the insect world, it was their presence in this lovely book that gave me the idea and impetus to make the darker side of life more evident by adding collage elements of human anatomical and scientific illustrations. And who would not be seduced by the butterflies! The jungle has never called to me, but travel, images, natural sciences, and books are all things I am drawn to. Here, Maria and I share many similarities, though three centuries separate us.”
In one of the opening passages found in the German text, Maria Sibylla Merian writes:
“Nothing that the eye sees recalls the images of home—not the day, not the night. A different sun illuminates the day, a different starry sky the night. The power of the sun is mighty, lion-like. It has set its fiery rays on the mountains, and like a flaming mane, its rays rain down on the rivers, steppes, and forests. Its eye burns demonic and dangerous. It is not the gentle, motherly star of the north. One must protect oneself against its rays, as if death were mingled with its glow.” Connor felt these quotes were “surprisingly similar to the quotes I chose from Werner Herzog’s rants in Les Blank’s film.”
Linda Connor created this artist book by the use of collage, overlaying imagery from Merian’s illustrative work over the written German text of the volume. Connor incorporated quotations from Burden of Dreams, a film by Les Blank and Maureen Gosling, which featured Werner Herzog’s rants about the South American jungle. In the 1970s, Connor talks of having collected some 19th-century hand-colored etchings of snakes. “They were weird and wonderful. I color photocopied and cut out these snakes and added them to Maria’s book; they seemed ripe for her jungle. Due to the small size of the book and the length of the snakes, their tails would wrap around to the next page. This pleased me as they made their way through the book.”
Connor states that she “knew from my art history classes at the Rhode Island School of Design, the term ‘Vanitas’ referred to a genre of paintings from Northern Europe in the 17th century that reflected Christian morality often projected onto women and their virtue. The still life tradition was often coded with symbolism, featuring beautiful flowers and fruit, insects and creepy-crawlers, and even dewdrops, indicating the transience of life, death, and decay. During this period, the classical fruit and floral arrangements were among a few acceptable subjects for women artists. Maria’s work could be miscategorized within the Vanitas tradition, but her deep knowledge of the natural world and her adventuresome spirit place her in a category of her own.”
Connor felt this book was ripe for “some Vanitas intervention.” She is grateful to Datz Press for publishing this work that spans 300 years, from 17th century artist Maria Sibylla Merian, to director Werner Herzog in the 1940’s, to artist and photographer Linda Connor. It is easy to become lost in the pages of this work, marveling at the compositions and dichotomy of imagery.