Amaryllis Belladonna
Artist
Betty Hahn
(American, born 1940)
Date1980
MediumDye diffusion print (Polacolor II)
DimensionsImage: 24 × 20 in. (61 × 50.8 cm)
Support: 24 × 20 in. (61 × 50.8 cm)
Mat: 30 1/8 × 26 in. (76.5 × 66 cm)
Support: 24 × 20 in. (61 × 50.8 cm)
Mat: 30 1/8 × 26 in. (76.5 × 66 cm)
ClassificationsPhotograph
Credit LineGift of Bobbie Foshay, 2021.
Object number2022.10.2
DescriptionTwo large, red flowers, one facing forward and the other to the right, with three leaves or stems extending to bottom of composition. Behind them is a black-and-white page from a botanical illustration book with numbered drawings of a petal, leaf, and other plant structures. Page lists “Amaryllis belladonna” in script at the top.eMuseum Notes
Betty Hahn loves flowers but is also an artist who loves to take on a loaded subject and give it a twist. She had been making pictures with cut flowers for several years when she got an opportunity to travel to Cambridge, Mass., in 1979 to work with one of the few 20x24 Polaroid cameras in the world. She found the glossy, color saturated Polaroid process well suited to her floral subjects and began combining vividly colored flowers with diagrams illustrating the structures of each plant. Neither still life nor scientific illustration, nor entirely decorative or imformative, the images from Hahn’s “Botanical Layout” series thwart our desire for a clear message.
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