The above photographs are part of a series of 297 photographic plates, commissioned and created by the German botanist and curator Alwin Berger, between 1906 and 1908, in the Hanbury Botanical Garden in La Mortola, near the French-Italian border. Berger used the medium of photography to explore possibilities in portraying plant species in the most objective way possible. It is these plants – cacti, succulents and agave – that in part came to define the aesthetics of the Riviera’s landscape.
This workshop takes the project Something of the Sun as a starting point to discuss research methodologies ranging from interviews, personal and institutional archives, positionalities and aesthetic regimes, as well as the incorporation of the many voices, encounters and resources that might inform research-based projects.