Beloeil, Belgium

Lynn Geesaman
Photography
2011

Discovery Hall, First Floor

Renowned photographer Lynn Geesaman is known for her work that explores the relationship between nature and mathematics. Trained as a scientist and mathematician, Geesaman seeks to reveal geometry in nature, saying: “I am not interested in nature itself. I am interested in shapes.” In gardens, parks, and landscapes around the United States and Europe, Geesaman reframes the natural world through a technical lens: rows of trees evolve into parallel lines, arches in gardens resemble ovals, hedges are rectangles. In a diffusion technique that blurs edges and in a style that merges abstraction with representation, her compositions are imaginative, dreamy, and hazy, mimicking the fluid boundary between art, science, math, and nature. 
 
Like so many of her photographs of formal gardens, this one is in the 14th century Chateau de Beloeil in the province of Hainaut, Belgium. The chateau lies in the middle of a Baroque garden designed in 1604. It is from this historic formal garden that this photograph was captured.
 
Geesaman earned a BS in Mathematics and Physics from Wellesley College in 1960. Her work has been exhibited at major institutions such as The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and The Whitney Museum of American Art and leading contemporary galleries around the US.