I just discovered this luscious book by Amy Goldman and Jerry Spanoli while browsing online at Chronogram. Its a great read written by By Timothy Malcom and I just have to share the link and some of the stunning images.
When Manhattan gallery owner Edwynn Houk (who represented daguerreotypist Jerry Spagnoli) introduced Jerry to heirloom gardener Amy Goldman he sparked the collaboration for the book: Heirloom Harvest: Modern Daguerreotypes of Historic Garden Treasures (Bloomsbury, 2015), a perfect joint effort between two people passionately devoted to preserving historical techniques. Click HERE if you’d like to buy a copy – it makes a great holiday gift!
Goldman, one of the world’s foremost experts on heirloom vegetable gardening, was slightly skeptical but brought samples of a previous year’s harvest to Spagnoli’s Manhattan studio.
“We didn’t know where this thing was going,” Goldman says. But each photoshoot showed daguerreotype made an ideal medium to capture the unique beauty of heirloom vegetables—antique varieties originating from open-pollinated seeds—and the “constantly evolving wonderland” of Goldman’s home, the 210-acre Abraham Traver farmstead outside Rhinebeck. The result is Heirloom Harvest: Modern Daguerreotypes of Historic Garden Treasures (Bloomsbury, 2015), a perfect collaboration between two people passionately devoted to preserving historical techniques.
READ MORE – Here’s the Link to CHRONOGRAM to learn more about this incredible collaboration.
On two hundred acres in the Hudson Valley, Amy Goldman grows heirloom fruits and vegetables–an orchard full of apples, pears, and peaches; plots of squash, melons, cabbages, peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, and beets. The president of the New York Botanical Garden has called her “perhaps the world’s premier vegetable gardener.” It’s her life’s work, and she’s not only focused on the pleasures of cultivating the land and feeding her family–she’s also interested in preserving our agricultural heritage, beautiful and unique heirlooms that truly are organic treasures.
Over fifteen years, the acclaimed photographer Jerry Spagnoli has visited Amy’s gardens to preserve these cherished varieties in another way–with the historical daguerreotype process, producing ethereal images with a silvery, luminous depth and a timeless beauty, underscoring the historical continuity and value of knobby gourds, carrots pulled from the soil, and fruit picked fresh from the tree.
In Heirloom Harvest, Amy’s essay, “Fruits of the Earth” describes her twenty-five year collaboration with the land. The text along with Jerry Spagnoli’s photographs and an afterword by M Mark add up to an exquisite package, an artist’s herbarium worthy of becoming an heirloom itself.
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Amy Goldman is one of the foremost heirloom plant conservationists in the United States. She is the author of Melons for the Passionate Grower, The Compleat Squash, and The Heirloom Tomato. She lives in Rhinebeck, New York.
Jerry Spagnoli is America’s premier daguerreotypist. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and others.
