>> Slideshow >>The future is no longer allowed to develop unassisted, nor to grow of ist own accord. It is being grown, cultured, bred. Performance and Profit are the relentless imperatives for the currently prevailing race, the selection for perfection. Almost imperceptibly, there is an emergent, dangerous new world thanks to an incalculable interplay of encroachments upon nature by Man. By means of systematic mutation and artificial selection, our flora is being refashioned by the hand of Man in an overweening attempt to improve on the perfection of Nature, to alter, adapt and so degrade Creation to a mere convenience for Man’s needs. State- of- the- art genetic engineering bears ever stranger flowers, whose unnatural beauty dazzles the eye and thus obscures their inherent dangers.
The irresistible glamour of this dangerous enchantment is manifest in the motifs of Achim Koerfer’s photo sequence FLORAL IMPACT. Since Antiquity, flowers have served as symbols of the transience and beauty of life. They bloom for a time to regale the world with their beauty, only to fade, wither and vanish. Nonetheless, flowers may be transient, but the memory of their beauty and the joy they bring are not. For this reason alone we must safeguard their originary variety and form. In aid of this endeavour, FLORAL IMPACT is animpassioned visual manifesto which speaks out eloquently and against the systematic denaturation of the plant kingdom.
>> Slideshow >> Our earth is blessed with an endless bounty and variety of plants and flowers, many of which grow and thrive unnoticed adorning our waysides. Most of the time, we go our way thoughtlessly and oversee the refreshingly unassuming little marvels of nature which line our paths and beautify our surroundings. If we only were to make pause and let our gaze wander a space, we would be delighted by many an enriching wonder of nature which would then present itself. Such beauty is not the preserve of manicured gardens and perfectly landscaped parks alone, but also manifest and inherent in the wild, untouched, unenhanced and unspolied by the hand of Man. In our latitudes, up to 100 different varieties of plants are to be found growing along every yard of any given country path.
FLORAL IMPACT, the visual manifesto, fulfils what it demands, which is, not to take everyday things, which are in reality so essential to our existence, for granted, but to perceive and appreciate them as the treasures that they are. Through FLORAL IMPACT, Koerfer lets mute flowers speak out against the systematic denaturation- the virtual defloration- of the plant kingdom. The photos for FLORAL IMPACT were shot at the most disparate locations. Some were shot in interiors where flowers and plants in unnatural arrangements served to lend a flash of natural beauty to artificial, sterile, neon- lit surroundings. Other pictures were shot outdoors, in the spring and autumn, in locations such as botanic gardens and garden plot allotments.
Employing his unique sui generis photographic technique, Koerfer intriguingly combines wild flowers with blooms of garden varieties to create apparently new, unreally exotic hybrids heretofore unknown to the world of Botany. These surreal exemplars, which embody their very own canon of aesthetics, strikingly portray Man’s overweening encroachments upon nature. FLORAL IMPACT symbolises the consequences of Man’s inroads into Nature and the invasive manipulations He inflicts upon it. In this, Koerfer’s cautionary graphic parable, the dazzling interplay of light and colour of the compositions makes manifest the mesmeric beauty of the outgrowths of the age- old dream of playing God - a dream that easily runs amuck and turns to hazardous and ultimately fatal delusion. Thus Koerfer conceived FLORAL IMPACT to be a distorting mirror, an urgent warning. For Koerfer, these floral compositions also reflect the fractal substrate of an unspoiled, pristine and autarchic nature it is our sacred duty to safeguard.
>> Slideshow >>Then what used to be a given, an incontrovertible fact of Nature, must nowadays be called into question and analysed to the last excruciating detail through the merciless lens of Man’s hubristic ambition. Natural phenomena of sublime and overwhelming beauty are reduced perforce to physical and chemical processes, and even our soul must come to terms with the debate of whether it really exists or whether it is ultimately just an illusion, a construct or side- effect emerging from biochemical and electrical processes. The miracle of life is reduced to the form of a double helix and a sequence of nucleobases: G, A, T and C which we are just beginning to fathom. Man hacks into the genetic code to make real his intrepid vision of a Brave New World without considering the possible consequences and thus unleashing a Pandora’s Box of irreversible processes.
Garlanded by the strange flowers of his Science, Man dreams his kaleidoscopic, technicolour dreams of further refashioning the world in his image. In reality, while Man goes his relentlessly venal, heedless and hubristic way, manipulating genes and culling helpless subjects in his breeding programmes, he runs the serious risk of being culled Himself by nature. In the final analysis, the world of Man is transient- only art, like Nature, is eternal.
