Coach House Gallery, the Stables, Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire
UK
28 March to 25 October 2020
Nick Knight, who has directed videos for Tom Ford, Lady Gaga and Kanye West, has now focussed on the classic rose in Roses from my Garden.
Created on an iPhone, the digital images are then enlarged and filtered through software that uses AI to infill the space between pixels.
What appears at first glance to be a historical approach to flower photography is, upon closer inspection, at the very cutting edge of imaging technology with the resulting images no longer photographs, but digital representations of photographs.
Knight's exhibition fits the surroundings at Waddesdon and its important Victorian garden, created by four generations of Rothschilds who themselves were passionate about horticulture, and in particular, the rose.
Waddesdon Manorwas built from 1874 by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild in the style of a French early 16th-century château.
Ferdinand was aninspired collector and the house was designed to showcase his exceptional collection of English portraits, French 18th-century furniture, Sèvres porcelain, and other decorative arts.
When he died in 1898, he left Waddesdon to his sister, Alice and upon her death, the house passed to her great-nephew, James de Rothschild, who inherited a substantial part of his father Baron Edmond's great collection.
In 1957, in order to ensure its future in perpetuity, Waddesdon was bequeathed to the National Trust.
The Rothschild family continues to run the property through a family charitable trust.