The series takes its name from the marriage of two words. Fluorescence (meaning the property of absorbing light of short wavelength and emitting light of longer wavelength) and , inflorescence (meaning the process of flowering).
This body of work represents the first collaborative fine art print release from creative and life partners Kate Ballis and Tom Blachford. The series captures flowers grown by the couple in their garden in Ivanhoe, a leafy suburb of Melbourne, Australia.
The series emerged from the depths of COVID lockdown, as their world shrank to a legally enforced radius of 5km they looked to the transient, miniature cosmos’ within the flowers they spent their days tending. Each flower provides a glimpse into a world both incredibly small and incredibly vast.
The results and process by which the images are captured has captivated both artists and allowed them to explore their shared love of using photography to make the unseen, seen.
Each bloom, cut on just the right day is brought into their pitch black home studio and subjected to a large amount of ultraviolet light, specifically the 365nm. wavelength, which is invisible to both the human eye and the camera used to capture these images. The flowers absorb this powerful energy, in turn changing its frequency and re-emitting it within the visible spectrum as a faint ethereal glow of colour, almost imperceivable to the human eye. The camera, fixed on the flower uses multiple long exposures to drink in this ghostly warmth.
Each image requires up to 100 of these exposures in order to capture the full depth and detail of each bloom, which are then stacked together to create the final image.
The results are reminiscent of galaxies far away, twinkling with stars of dust and exploding with pollen supernovas. To Tom and Kate they are Still life portraits of stardust, revealed by invisible frequencies.
Each work takes its title not from its botanical or common plant name but from a distant galaxy within our always expanding known universe.