ARTS&LIFE ON THE COVER
B Photographer brings joy through botanical art.
Laurie Tennent
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JULY 8 • 2021
MACKENZIE O’BRIEN
ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY CONTRIBUTING WRITER PHOTOS BY LAURIE TENNENT
otanical artist Laurie Tennent has had a lifelong passion for the art of capturing images. The Birmingham native, who attended the College for Creative Studies in Detroit and received a bachelor of fine arts degree in photography, has had her work featured in public and private art galleries around the world. With her photography on display through October at City Bloom: Birmingham, a 3-mile outdoor installation along the Rouge River Trail that runs through Booth Park, Quarton Lake and Linden Park, the all botanical-themed exhibit is just one of many creative projects Tennent, soon to be 60, has in the works. “I really love historical botanical drawings and Dutch paintings,” she says of the two key influences on her style. “They’re really rich and very dark in the background.” For Tennent’s botanical photography in particular, where flowers pop in color against similarly dark backgrounds, she calls her twist on these two styles a “contemporary botanical illustration.” “In using photography as the medium, the images are classic in their composition,” she explains, “but they’re presented in a very contemporary, sleek contrast with metal frame to the edge, so they almost appear like a painting on canvas.”
PHOTO ART GALLERY It’s this distinctive, dramatic presentation of her work that has drawn people to Tennent’s photography for decades. After graduation, she began to build her nowrenowned career by working in local art galleries. “I really learned a lot about the business of handling artists and also what it took for artists to get their work into galleries,” she says. “I learned how the galleries worked with their artists to promote their careers.” Inspired to launch her own gallery, Tennent took these important lessons with her as she opened Eton Street Gallery in Birmingham. “I featured the finer work of commercial photographers all over the country,” she explains. This gave commercial photographers a chance to showcase their work, which Tennent says many of these artists didn’t have a chance to do. “There were a lot of great car photographers in Detroit, and they had all this great personal work that no one ever saw,” she recalls as an example, alongside architectural photographers. Yet Tennent found that showcasing these works alone couldn’t support the art gallery in keeping the space open. Already experienced in the business of commercial photography, Tennent joined the industry and began to do catalog work. She took photos for specialty retailers like J. Crew and Crate & Barrel,
