Büropflanze ─ Saskia Groneberg
A photobook exploring office plants as signs of disorder, dependency and life within standardised working environments.
Büropflanze (office plant / 2012) is a photobook by German photographer Saskia Groneberg, based on her research into plants found in offices across Germany. At once a reflection on the workspace and a deeper inquiry into the forms and values of labour, the book looks at how fragments of nature introduced into standardised, functional office environments quietly expose fundamental human desires and contradictions. Even when provided merely as decoration, office plants become small forms of disorder within rigid systems, ambiguous presences within geometric spaces, and sparks of life inserted into structures of management and control.
Unlike postcards from holidays or family photographs, which personalise impersonal office architecture through static signs of identity, plants change and grow. They stretch toward the ceiling, cover radiators, and creep into the gaps of blinds—sometimes unnoticed, sometimes carefully tended with affection. Only partly controllable and deeply dependent on care, they establish their own peculiar ecology within artificial surroundings, from mailrooms to executive offices. Groneberg photographed these plants as living beings inhabiting a kind of “natural habitat,” while also collecting leaves to create a herbarium, scanning them for archival purposes, and later growing them as cuttings. Accompanied by texts written by office workers, the book offers glimpses into the psychological relationships between plants and their caretakers. With a form that recalls a historical botanical atlas, it reveals another mode of life quietly unfolding within the built environment of the office.
Limited edition of 500 copies.
—
Title: Büropflanze (office plant / 2012)
Artist: Saskia Groneberg
Text: Thomas Seelig
Publisher: Edition Taube, 2017
Format: Hardcover, thread-stitched, Offset Duplex UV Print
Size: 210 × 290 mm
Pages: 76
Language: German / English
Edition: First edition of 500 copies
ISBN: 9783945900086