212 Photography, Isanbul

Helene Schmitz - A Botanical Affair

Opening September 26th 
 

The Swedish artist and photographer Helene Schmitz brings A Botanical Affair, to 212 Photography
Istanbul this autumn.
 

An affair suggests desire, secrecy and a relationship that exceeds its official terms—and that is precisely the territory Schmitz enters in her encounters with the botanical world. 

A Botanical Affair brings together three bodies of work in which the flower becomes both object of desire and object of scrutiny: admired, cultivated, classified and, at times, dissected. A Botanical Affair presents works from three distinct projects by Helene Schmitz; Blow Up (2003), The Carl Linneus Project - A Passion For Systems (2007) and Carnivores (2010). Rather than approaching plants as subjects of beauty or scientific observation, Schmitz investigates the cultural histories embedded within them. Her photographs draw on the long tradition of botanical representation, from the Enlightenment’s ambition to classify and organise nature to contemporary systems of cultivation, extraction and control—concerns that become increasingly prominent in her later work. 

Carl Linnaeus eighteenth-century attempt to understand the sexual life of plants is described in his so called Sexual System. His dream to establish order within the natural world was also an attempt to make nature legible and controllable. This historical perspective interested Schmitz and connects her earlier botanical works to her broader concern with humanity’s impact on the environment. Whether photographing plants, forest plantations, quarries or coastal landscapes threatened by rising sea levels-she repeatedly returns to the threshold where natural processes encounter human intervention. 


Helene Schmitz and Ellen K Willas will be present for the opening of the festival 212 in Istanbul. 

Do not hesitate to reach out if you are in town!
 
 

📍 212 Photography, Isanbul. 
MSGSU Tophane-i Amire Culture and Art Center

🗓  September 26 - October 25 2026