Once again photographers Geene and de Nooy have in their own uniquely particular way been going about what they call ‘reclassifying’. This time they’ve been reordering – as a tribute to the sixteenth-century botanist Rembert Dodoens – the Dodonaea genus of plants named after him by Linnaeus.
Using photographic collages the plants are here again, by way of illustration, regrafted. In essence this curious method of classification is tremendously interesting, though you will be hard put to it to find a scientific basis for it. The use of the Risograph process for the printing is a deliberate choice: the result is not razor-sharp, but it means that this agreeable little work plays games with our expectations, making us look at this alternative herbarium with more deliberate awareness. The various well-chosen and emphatically uncoated but tinted papers enhance the organic, botanical atmosphere.
Self-published in a print run of 100, Dodonaei was not available from bookshops. It is now not available anywhere.