Photography: Soulcatcher Studio: Ron van Dongen

"I am currently living in London and recently purchased a print online from Soulcatcher Studio for my brother's wedding gift. I have been amazed at the speed of response, level of service, thoroughness of communication, and thoughtfulness in the gift's preparation and delivery. Thank you for making this such an easy and enjoyable process!" Katie N., satisfied customer

Ron van Dongen

Soulcatcher Studio is very pleased to welcome Ron van Dongen to our stable of esteemed photographic artists. Mr. van Dongen is one of the most recognized and respected photo-graphers of botanical studies working today. He brings a fresh, contemporary approach to botanical illustration.

Ron was born in Judibana, Venezuela in 1961, and raised in the heartland of floral agriculture in Warmond, the Netherlands. He later studied health science and biology at the Nederlandse Leraren Opleiding in Delft, the Netherlands. In 1989 he moved to San Francisco, California to study photography at the Academy of Art.

In the foreword to Ron van Dongen's first monograph, Alba Nero (Nazraeli Press, 1999), Steven Jenkins describes the brilliance of Ron van Dongen's floral studies. He comments, "...rarely has the infinite mystery of a dahlia or magnolia been visualized with such hushed reverence and elegiac intensity as in the photographs of Ron van Dongen." Jenkins continues, "He shows us the flower as resourceful and delicate, decorative and essential, sacred and sensual, life force and death knell." These images are always suggestive of all that is beyond our tethered reach.

Perhaps the most wondrous aspect of van Dongen's photography is that he nurtures and cultivates all of the flowers that he photographs at his home in Portland, Oregon. Plucked from their backyard habitat and brought indoors, these dazzling arums, anemones and papavers are isolated or paired for the camera as emblems of a postmodern struggle between nature's vagabond wilderness and culture's manipulation of its blithe freedom.

The backyard wonderland of Ron van Dongen

Using a large-format camera, van Dongen is able to produce intensely detailed close-up images of his botanical studies. His photographs offer us an illuminated insight into the often strange but always wonderful natural forms that exist in nature. Each flower becomes a landscape revealing changing textures and subtle plays of light. In turn, each finished limited edition print is a true work of art, created by hand and unique unto itself.

Van Dongen's work has been widely shown in the U.S. and abroad, and is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Microsoft Corporation; Polo Ralph Lauren Collection; and the Elton John Collection.

Click here to view delicate mystery: the photographs of Ron van Dongen,
our exhibition and sale of these exquisite fine art photographs.

Click here to view Ron van Dongen: In Bloom - New Color Botanicals,
our exhibition and sale of these exquisite fine art photographs.

Complete print information is available by viewing both of the above-mentioned exhibitions.

Other photographs by this artist are also available. Please contact Soulcatcher Studio
if you are interested in these or any other images.

Several limited edition monographs by this artist are available in our bookstore.

All artwork is copyright © of the respective artist or estate.
All other material copyright © Soulcatcher Studio. All rights reserved.
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