Magna Garden - Flower Photography

Magna Garden presents original scanography - photographs created by scanning 3D natural materials at high maginfication and resolution. I began producing them in 1996 and my archive now contains hundreds of scans of flowers, leaves, twigs, grasses, feathers and foods. I only need more time to sort them out and make them available.

MagnaGarden.com

Magna Garden, as a project, came about in 2010, some 14 years after I began to produce my flower photos. In its current form, it contains a tour presentation of my work with descriptions in Czech and English.

I often call them flower scans, although they’re produced on photographic papers (glossy or mat) and I often choose other themes besides flowers. My digital images are printed by normal photo-lab techniques.

The only difference is in the process of obtaining the image - the subjects are not photographed with a camera, but scanned, using high-resolution scanner. The results are close-ups with a unique look, seemingly so close you could touch them.

The History

Like many experimenters, I began with a copy-machine - a high end color-copier. My first work in 1996 focused on fall-colored leaves and I had my first exhibition of 40 pieces during the spring of 1997 at Radost FX's gallery space in Prague.

Even before that, I’d attempted to laminate leaves, but the heat of the process always destroyed the bright colors and (of course) flattened the image. Copy-machines have many limitations, mainly that there was no digital record of the image to allow later editing and printing.

My "second generation" flower images came from a scanner and it felt like going from a magnifying glass to a microscope. While copy-machines magnified by only 200% at that time, suddenly I was able to work at 400% and later, even up to 6400% scan magnification. My current machine surpassed my needs and I settled in a range of magnification between 1000-2000%, depending on the subject.

Then I play with the images afterwards, using Photoshop to airbrush away dust, pollen or other impurities. The printing process has also improved over the years, allowing both classic prints on classic photo paper, as well as artist canvas and other materials, using inks that are resistant to weather and sun-fade.

Inspiration for Other Artists

I was pleased to realize that my art communicates to people on its own. In 2010, my photographs were integrated into a theatre performance by the HoME theatre group and poet Jan Maruna wrote a collection of poems based on my photos called Testimony of the Soul.

It was fascinating to work on both of these projects and I'm certainly interested in more artistic collaborations.

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