News
Initiated in 2010, News is Flechtner's most recent body of work, an ongoing examination of the human imprint on nature over the passing of time, and collective memories as administered by public media. Throughout it's suggested that that today's headlines are a simultaneous realization of history and of present day reality. First cultivating a variety of seeds in his garden, and then germinating the vegetation over 100 international newspapers, Flechtner photographs the publications head on, as though a document fit for an historical archive, filling his frame with the entire front page. The ensuing images, overexposed and ephemeral microcosms, allude to a human mediation in which nature is prompted to reassert itself, gradually melding and growing over the industrial world. Says Flechtner, "I'm sprinkling seeds over the newspapers; I water them and wait to see what remains. The quote of today would be, 'the excitement of today is the garden of tomorrow' ". News, shown here for the first time, is part of a larger oeuvre entitled Sites, which works around the idea of man's constant intervention to construct, control and restructure fields, gardens and parks in a decorative manner. What Flechtner attempts to convey is the confluence between the human desire to master and posses nature versus the prevailing vitality of the green kingdom.
Fantom Photographic Quarterly, Issue 07, 2011