Flora Photographica is a striking and extravagantly designed book. Each bloom shown here has been observed with that acuity of vision which only the most sensitive artist-photographers can bring to bear.

Here are Mapplethorpe’s tulips, half-metal, half-living creatures; Steichen’s delphiniums, preserved in an everlasting summery perfection of blues and pinks; Atget’s open-air profusion of poppies; Cunningham’s magnolia, richly fertile and lush; Man Ray’s surreal yet pure calla lily; Chris Enos’s dying poinsettia, its colours curdling in decay.

These are masterpieces of photographic art, in an astonishing range of media, from photography’s beginnings up to the present day. Full details of the techniques and processes used are elucidated in the introduction and commentaries by the acclaimed photo-historian William A. Ewing, but, above all, here are flowers as we have never seen them before.