Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden was published in 1911, and, in the century that followed, it became a classic of children’s literature. The beloved story, which follows a young girl who discovers and restores a neglected plot of land, now lends its name to Michelle Blancke’s (b. 1984) enigmatic photo series. These pictures introduce us to strange and unusual places, where moss and lichen carpet every inch of the frame. Familiar woodlands are abstracted and transformed, enveloping viewers in a tangle of leaves and ferns. It’s all just a little more lurid than we might expect. Blancke’s vision – “of an opening to a hidden world, beyond the visible” – stems from an awareness that each person perceives reality differently. She is fascinated by scientific and philosophical ideas of consciousness, matter, cosmology and metaphysics, as well as the stories we tell each other: fantasy, mythology and spirituality. michelleblancke.nl
Image credits:
1. Michelle Blancke, Secret Garden No. 5, (2023).
2. Michelle Blancke, Secret Garden No. 331, (2023).
3. Michelle Blancke, Secret Garden No. 5, (2023).
4. Michelle Blancke, Secret Garden No. 326, (2023).
5. Michelle Blancke, Secret Garden No. 325, (2023).
6. Michelle Blancke, Secret Garden No. 315, (2023).
7. Michelle Blancke, Secret Garden No. 329, (2023).
