Huntington Rose Garden and OEB 7350, photograph of Octavia E. Butler, 2001
Connie Samaras
Huntington Desert Garden (cacti) and OEB 1723, novel fragment from Parable of the Sower, 1989
Connie Samaras
Huntington Desert Garden (agave) and OEB 1723, novel fragment from Parable of the Sower, 1989
Connie Samaras
Huntington Chinese Garden and OEB 3245, commonplace book, journal fragment on climate change, 1990
Connie Samaras
Huntington Shakespeare Garden, San Gabriel Mountains, and OEB 7252,
Octavia E. Butler research photograph for Xenogenesis, Huayna Picchu, Peru, July 1985
Connie Samaras
Bridge, Huntington Chinese Garden, and OEB Box 326 folder 3, photograph of Octavia E. Butler,
Deception Falls, Washington, 2001-2005
Connie Samaras
The Past is Another Planet
Connie Samaras
The conceptual photographs of Connie Samaras (b. 1950) depict what the artist terms “speculative landscapes” — sites that are in the process of realizing specific visions of the future: the construction of Dubai, a lesbian retirement community, a corporate space launch facility in the remote desert.
For Radio Imagination, Samaras focused on the Huntington Library as the repository of Butler’s papers, and the links between the Huntington Gardens — an unparalleled collection of plant specimens — and Butler’s fascination with the arcana of botany. Using a large-format camera, Samaras photographed the gardens through enlarged transparencies of images from the archive. Handwritten passages of Parable of the Sower, snapshots from the Amazon (where Butler researched her Xenogenesis trilogy), and other fragments are superimposed on the Huntington’s manicured landscape.