When photographed by Thomas Struth, sunflowers, yarrow, mallow, lilies, and delphinium express something very strange. In lieu of traditional interpretations of the flower—the rose as equivalent to love or the blood of Christ, the tulip as symbol of inflexibility, and the violet as evocative of youth and modesty—Struth’s flower photographs realistically capture the generative growth cycle of a plant. Unlike Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs of flowers, these are never sexualized, rather, they seem undisturbed, peaceful, modest. Wherein, then, lies their attraction?

One could speculate that it