Finished looking through Fontcuberta's Herbarium. Fontcuberta is a conceptual artist who plays with the conventions of documentary photography in order to encourage us to question what we see, and to consider more closely who is behind it and why it is being shown. Herbarium (1984), was a series of stark black and white photographs of fantastical plants that Fontcuberta constructed from animal and plant matter and detritus found outside his studio. They referenced the objective and finely detailed style of the botanical photographs taken by the German photographer Karl Blossfeldt in the 1920's, which encouraged the view of photographs as a vehicle for scientific truth.

Fontcuberta "arranged inanimate objects such as electrical cord, plastic, a shaving brush or a rubber hose into what appear to be exotic plants", thereby creating "pseudoplants". “I like to consider my work as a vaccine... My mission is to warn people about the possibility that photography might be doctored and show why people need to be sceptical of images that influence our behaviour and our way of thinking.” - Joan Fontcuberta

Mark Cator, Cowslip, 2014

Mark Cator, Azalea with Ben, 2002 -2014

Karl Blosfeldt, Indian Balsam, from Urformen der Kunst, published in 1929

Joan Fontcuberta, Giliandria Escoliforcia, Herbarium series, 1984