PHOTOGRAPHER: Harris Steinman
FORMAT: 260 x 210 mm (landscape) 96 pp.
Soft cover, integral binding with flaps. Full colour.

On Special!

Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in Cape Town, South Africa is situated in the Cape Floristic Region. The smallest of the world's six 'floral kingdoms', this region is the most richly endowed for its size: it has almost 9,000 plant species, of which more than 6,000 are found nowhere else on earth. The region was proclaimed a World Heritage Site in 2004 and comprises eight protected areas in the Western Cape, one of which includes Kirstenbosch.

With its unique setting on the eastern slopes of Table Mountain and its constantly changing atmosphere, Kirstenbosch has always had a very powerful attraction for Harris Steinman, who has visited it regularly in all seasons to photograph its flora. He did this without a book in mind, but the people who saw his images were so moved and excited by them that they urged him to consider publication. They reacted in this way because his pictures are not conventional studies of the kind one finds in most botanical or horticultural publications, but highly evocative and compelling close-up images that reveal aspects of the plants most viewers had never noticed before.

This is essentially a photographic book: apart from the foreword, preface and introduction, the text consists entirely of short captions that identify the plants depicted. In his preface the photographer says: "I have no idea how the images came about – I did not follow a predetermined plan or formula but over a period of several years responded subjectively to the visual impressions offered to me in Kirstenbosch: to the interplay between light and shade, to plant shape and structure, to colour, pattern and texture, and to the elegance, delicacy and tranquility of the subjects."

By revealing such highly unusual aspects of the flora of Kirstenbosch, the photographs in this book will encourage visitors to linger in the garden, to take time to appreciate the finer details of its plants, and in the process to savour once again the astonishing artistry of nature that is, indeed, beyond words.