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  Friday  June 7  2002    12: 51 AM

Photography

FLOWERS
by KATINKA MATSON

I have mounted on my wall a most remarkable image. It's a gloriously vibrant water lily, with creamy colors and almost infinite deepness in detail and tone. It's large, about two feet square. It was neither painted, nor is it technically a photograph. It's beautiful. Everyone who has seen it has remarked on how stunning it looks, and how unlike a typical photograph. It looks like a painting but it is much to finely tuned and rendered, too polished. It's different.

This flower is one of a series of ravishing images made by Katinka Matson; the images in both her series, Forty Flowers (January, 2002) , and the current Twelve Flowers, can be seen here in low resolution versions. Katinka Matson's digital images are both pioneering and representative. She is in the venerable mode of following the technology.
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thanks to wood s lot

Jesusfuckingchrist! How hard can this be? Plop a flower on a scanner. She titled her series Twelve Flowers. Maybe I'll do a series called Dead Flowers (this has nothing to do with Jerry Garcia). So I approached my shrine to Dame Edna and gently removed the piece of gladiola that she had thrown to me (only to me) at the Moore Theater during one of her experiences.

I call it Homage to Dame Edna. I scanned this little five inch momento at 2,400 dpi and ended up with a file over 200mb. Maybe a little overkill. I brought it down to 300 dpi at 12 x 17 inches. Only 55mb. Here is a 1,080 pixel wide version (95kb) and a 2,000 pixel wide version (289kb). See? Bigger is better! Now I need to get that 13 inch wide Epson printer and some archival inks. I also need to kill some more flowers.

By the way — what is "nor is it technically a photograph"? What, technically, is a photograph? Looks like one to me.

By the way (again) — I like her photographs and I'm sure her prints are spectacular.