Gilles Bensimon/Watercolour, Hamilton’s Gallery, W1 - review

Fusing his passions for flowers and water, famous photographer Gilles Bensimon creates hyper-real and super-saturated images
15 December 2012

Christmas treats used include Japanese paper flowers inside crackers; when dropped into a glass of water, they would swell and bloom magically into brightly coloured bouquets.

Something similar happened when Gilles Bensimon began experimenting, two years ago, with his passion for flowers and swimming pools. The famous French photographer had paused from figurative and fashion work to transfer the latest printing process on to his flowers project which involved piles of freshly cut blossoms immersed in water and then jumping in with his camera and shooting close-ups from below.

The results show no connection with the classic Spanish or Dutch still-life flower painters or elegant black and white tones of Robert Mapplethorpe’s or Irving Penn’s photographs. Bensimon’s flowers have shiny, hyper-real, super-saturated colours, and often abstract designs, all set against backdrops of differently blue waters. A strange contradiction occurs between his close-ups of dazzling colour and glistening surfaces with similar beauty of Keith Arnatt’s food rotting in a tip. Their shared gaudiness and painterliness separate the living flowers from Arnatt’s opposites.

Bensimon explains the joy of working with flowers. “The water helps me capture the essence of their living beauty one last time before they wilt and fade.”

Until January 18 (020 7499 9493, hamiltonsgallery.com)

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