Welcome to My Site

“I have two talents: making flowers work beautifully in a space and being able to photograph

them.”

Artist Harald Altmaier’s magnificent large-scale floral compositions are the culmination of

his years of experience as a globally recognised florist and imaginative, inventive

photographer with an exquisite eye for detail. His images are contemporary descendants of

the seventeenth century Dutch flower painting tradition, which play with still-life and trompe

l’oeil techniques to produce grand narratives of beautiful objects – antique mirrors, baroque

objets, lush swags of damask, taxidermy creatures, as well as the exuberant flowers

themselves – that are visually arresting and utterly absorbing for the viewer.

Altmaier’s works often seem closer to paintings than photographs. Indeed, his technique

embodies the literal meaning of photography, ‘drawing with light’. With a long, single

exposure and a very closely controlled daylight source, he throws the light back over his

tableaux, creating his characteristic painterly effect that allows chiaroscuro moments of

revelation, whilst enhancing the forms and gorgeous colours of his floral subjects.