tillandsia is the celebration of an innocuous plant that is misnamed a moss, considered a weed, and accused of being a parasite. A post in a neighborhood Facebook group asking for help in “getting rid of the Ball Moss that masks the trees messy”, alongside the growing trend for air plants (one of which is Ball Moss), was the catalyst for this work.

For this project I collected 36 specimens of tillandsia recurvata, commonly known as Ball Moss, from a single patch of forest where the plants had fallen from their host trees. To underscore the individuality and variety of this group of plants I produced over 100 unique lumen photograms, repeating the style while varying the specimen and the paper. Over 30 black and white darkroom papers from nearly one hundred years of manufacture were utilized to make these photograms. The varied chemistries of the papers bring about the variety of colors when exposed to daylight for a number of hours.

The lumen prints are installed in museum-style display boxes and an accompanying field guide elaborates on the true nature of the Ball Moss plant.