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The Flower Album (powerHouse Books) by Dietmar Busse Reviewed by Tina Maas Article rating: 6.00

This book is a real treat for art-lovers, photographers and flower enthusiasts alike because it combines all of these elements in a truly unique personal vision.

In his highly sensual self-portraits, German born fashion photographer Dietmar Busse uses the surprising combination of body painting with the ancient and meditative art of flower rearrangement in a very innovative way to create stunning and certainly unique feasts of color and beauty.

Placed against his monochrome backdrops but accentuated by the rich colors of nature and supported by their corresponding body paints, he transforms flower petals, leaves and stems into intriguing decorative patterns on himself as well as mimics body parts or suggests body adornments like nail polish, beards or masks.

Busse, often staring right into the camera, covers his painted body with carefully placed flower petals, which seem "stuck" to his skin and are totally captivating in their deliberate placement and colorfulness and lend the photographs an air of otherworldliness and of fairy tale lands. After some contemplation the petals start transforming themselves in the viewers mind into fantastical insects sitting on his body or other times beautiful feathers that seem to be sticking out of it.

As a fashion photographer he seems to be fascinated by the petals as a symbolic garment, as if he could convince the inherent beauty of the flowers to literally "cling" to him or as if in the magical world he creates he is dressed despite his nakedness in the newest, most exquisite and elegant fabric available - flower petals.

But in all the apparent beauty there is also a lingering knowledge of death and decay since every flower, at its most beautiful stage of life, had to be sacrificed to help create the artists personal vision of beauty.

Vulnerability is another theme his art calls to mind, especially in the obvious juxtapositions of his nude self portraits on one side and his extremely delicate and fragile petal arrangements on the other where he achieves to invoke anything from fantastical, imaginary, tropical flowers to human forms that could be self portraits in themselves,

Although the central theme of the book is beauty in its many surprising manifestations and Busses’s exploration may appear playful and carefree, the self-portraits also reveal a struggling artist behind the flower facade and raise questions about a self-indulgent Narcissus as well as about the issue of self-identity when the artist hides coquettishly behind a huge phallic orchid mask.

>>Click here for more information on Flower Album

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