Succulents from an artist’s eyes

This week, Succulentophile’s photos were taken by Johann Espiritu. Johann brings a wealth of sensitivity to the art of photography through a blend of technical proficiency and emotional depth. A lawyer by profession, it is perhaps the combination of a cerebral mind and an artistic heart that allows him to capture the world in all its magnificent truthfulness.

Today’s column marks the return of Johann Espiritu, that anthropologist-turned lawyer with the deepest of passions for photography. As most of this column’s readers know, Johann was the main photographer during the "early years" of Succulentophile. But he got "sidetracked" by way of a Master’s Degree in Law at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and was away for almost two years. But now he’s back and we’re really glad to have him behind the lens again.

For today’s column, I gave Johann a blank sheet of paper, so to speak, and asked him to conjure up whatever he felt like creating with his photographic wizardry. I wanted to get Johann’s perspective on the plants that attracted him most and to capture these subjects in whatever way he saw best. In the past, I picked all the plants from my greenhouses. This time, I asked Johann to go around my greenhouses and pick the plants himself – those which caught his artistic fancy. We decided on 10 plants. During the entire selection process, I tried to influence his choices a bit, suggesting he consider this plant or that as a potential subject. But Johann’s resolve that afternoon couldn’t be shaken, and in the end, I left it to the artist’s whims that day. I must say, and maybe you will agree, that the subjects (as depicted in the 10 photos here) were very well chosen indeed, with wonderful contrasts of shape, structure, color and variety.

At my first mini-greenhouse, which houses about 200 of my favorite Haworthias and Pseudolithos species, Johann’s eye was immediately (and I mean immediately!) hooked by a nice six-headed clump of Haworthia coarctata v. coarctata, a South African columnar grower from this vast and varied genus. He liked it because of its form and structure plus the various shades of green, red, brown and orange that interplayed in this specimen’s coloration. As Johann would explain to me later, he tries to construct the picture in his mind before he shoots a photo, and he saw the interesting possibilities with this coarctata clump. What was even more stunning was that this was the only plant he would select from my mini-greenhouse! I mean, there are a lot of very beautiful and interesting plants in prime condition in that first greenhouse, but for Johann, only the one plant would do for his purposes.

At my second and largest greenhouse, which is home to about a thousand or so plants, Johann picked seven plants. The easiest and most obvious selection was Mammillaria schumanii v. globosa which was fortunately flowering that day. Its fuchsia flowers are stunningly large given the size of this plant, with the flowers totally enveloping the top part of the plant. Another plant in flower was Euphorbia hotstaetteri from Africa, a much rarer relative of the common "Crown-of-Thorns Cactus" Euphorbia milii, which isn’t even a cactus at all. E. hofstaetteri has light-yellow flowers.

Johann also liked a multi-headed clump of Epithelantha bokei v. unguispina which I obtained almost eight years ago as a tiny single-headed seedling. Johann really liked the plant’s structure and spine formation. He was also particularly intrigued by the stem formation of Astroloba muiricata, a cousin of the Haworthias (although I happen to think the genus astroloba can be incorporated as a sub-genus within haworthia, but that’s another, more complicated story best left for another day). He also chose a large, beautifully-grown notocactus species that I obtained from the Benguet growers last year, as well as a Melocactus matanzus similarly obtained last Christmas. The South American melocacti are particularly intriguing plants, especially when these are mature and start to show off their red, bushy-headed cephaliums from where the tiny flowers and seedpods are produced. The last plant chosen from this greenhouse was Haworthia cummigii, a newly discovered and described plant that is still quite rare in cultivation today. I pointed this plant out to Johann and he became interested in its translucent, icy-blue leaf formation.

Finally, in my third greenhouse which contains over 700 plants of Haworthias and Gasterias, Johann was immediately attracted to a wonderful, tight clump of my favorite Haworthia turgida v. turgida (the scientific name in reference to its highly turgid and juicy leaves) from Koks Peak in the Cape Province, South Africa, because its lower leaves had developed a deep red coloration. This occurs only if the plant receives enough strong direct sunlight, and even then the plant might not develop the reddish undertones. I was amazed that this particular clump, which isn’t very large, immediately caught Johann’s eye amongst the hundreds and hundreds of other noteworthy plants in that greenhouse. Johann would later explain that the color contrast presented by the leaves of that turgida specimen had creative possibilities pleasing to the viewer. The last plant selected is a plant I am most proud of, actually. In my mind, it is a perfectly grown plant of Haworthia cooperi v. joeyae (some botanists call it variety dielsiana, but joeyae was its first name, described by the famous Haworthia expert Col. Charles Scott and named after this wife Joey). It has a rich blue coloration, the attribute that attracted Johann to this plant, and its leaves are highly translucent and rounded at the ends. It is a highly sought-after plant by collectors worldwide and I was quite pleased that Johann selected this amongt his 10 subjects.

Selecting the plants was the easy part of the afternoon for Johann. The hard part for the true artist and connoisseur-photographer was to capture the subjects in a manner that highlighted particular characteristics and details of the plant that would appeal to both photographer and, hopefully, viewers as well. I noted that while the typical factors of the subject’s form, color and structure interplayed with the light and the background presented, much of the final product really depends on the photographer’s mood and what he fancies during a particular day. The pictures presented were taken last Monday, in the afternoon of an overcast day. Johann shot the pictures while we were watching the President deliver her SONA address. Can you see anything in these photos that relates somehow to that event? I am absolutely sure that Johann would have picked some different plants and maybe shot the plants differently as well if it were a Saturday morning and the sun was shining brightly.

The true artist-photographer is very meticulous and observant of his subjects, unwilling to rush things. There are photographers who are able to capture the moment as it unravels. Johann prefers to study his subjects and compose the picture in his mind before he actually shoots the first shot, much like many of the top professional golfers today who try to imagine the shot they are going to hit even before they strike the ball. Once he’s determined the creative angle for his subjects, Johann takes at least 10 or so photos for each, sometimes even more. From the batch of over a hundred photos taken, he has chosen one for each subject. Johann took well over two hours to capture the 10 images shown here.

Only carefully selected parts of each plant are shown in each of the photos. In one case, that of Euphorbia hofstaetteri, only its flower is shown. In the case of Haworthia cummingii, Johann chose only to show its translucent leaf tips. In the case of the Notocactus species, only its growing apex is depicted. And yet the visual images produced go beyond simply viewing a photograph. Johann’s pictures challenge the viewer to search for more. His photos here entice the viewer to imagine the entire plant, to form your own conclusions about some of Nature’s true wonders. It is this element that enriches the subject matter and captivates the viewer, making one thirst for more.

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E-mail the author at succulentophile@yahoo.com