Matthew Zucker, Pia Östlund

jury statement

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The Netherlands /// Die Niederlande
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Nature printing is a process that utilizes plants and natural objects to create images – using the object’s surface, directly or indirectly, for the printing process.

This luxury volume presents forty-five varied nature printing methods, identified from books and journals within the Zucker Collection, which covers the period 1733 to 1902. The Zucker Collection is the most extensive collection of nature prints ever assembled, with 130 seminal works. It includes journals, published books, unique manuscripts, and American Currency, which get their stage in “Capturing Nature”.

The forest green cover material, equipped with a beautiful blind embossing on front and back, forms the ideal jacket for the rarities of the collection. The printing methods presented in this treasure trove of a book applied to a wealth of natural objects, such as meteorites, fossils, insects, flowers, leaves, flowering plants, mosses, seaweed, human bones, minerals, snakes, bats, and more. All these were presented in the intro (and outro) section as closeups of the different printing methods in chronological order. Details you can't get enough of.

The middle part of the book acts as the factually informative part of the volume. Here the collector's items are presented zoomed out, you gain an overall view – visually as well as content-wise. Another feast for the eyes: The illustrated list is cased by the descriptions of all techniques represented in the collection. These explanations are printed in silver and white on green paper and work as a visual index.

A journey through fascinating exhibits amassed during a twenty-year period everyone gladly embarks.