Capturing Nature - 150 Years of Nature Printing

By Matthew Zucker and Pia Östlund

Hailed as the earliest precursor to photography, nature printing is the practice of using impressions from the surface of a natural object such as leaves, flowering plants, ferns, seaweed, snakes, and more to produce an image. Author Matthew Zucker has spent decades curating the most extensive collection of nature prints ever assembled, with more than 13,000 images across 120 rare and seminal works, including journals, published books, unique manuscripts, American currency, and instructional texts related to nature printing from 1733 to 1902.

This gorgeous volume explores Zucker's collection, allowing readers to see these nature prints presented side by side for the first time and enabling unique comparisons while creating a visually stunning journey through the developments over a 150-year period in printing methods, including photography with examples of cyanotypes. The ultimate guide to nature printing, this is a beautiful reference work for scholars, artists, designers, botanists, and anyone interested in nature, botanical illustration, and printing.

Princeton Architectural Press, 2023, hardcover, 9.125 x 13 inches, 352 pages.