Jennifer Latour’s Species Captures Her Appreciation for Natural Forms

Stillness, arranged.

Writer Jack Lowe
Photographer Jennifer Latour

Wild Species no.32, Ireland, 2025

Jennifer Latour’s sculptures are not built to last. “That impermanence is central to the work—it speaks to cycles of renewal, vulnerability, and transformation,” the Vancouver-based floral artist says. Her photographs of these sculptures, which form the basis of multiple series of work, become “the lasting record of something that was never meant to endure.” The results are what Latour calls “species,” living objects that are designed to be fleeting.

These natural sculptures, flowers on the end of long tendrils of sticks or stems that have been bent into alien shapes, challenge us with the contrast of a clearly designed and built object made entirely of natural materials. Latour describes the hand-built species as “ephemeral assemblages made from locally sourced flowers and plant material.” She takes inspiration from a wide range of places, including plant photography by German photographer Karl Blossfeldt, Swedish botanical studies, and the standing mobiles created by American sculptor Alexander Calder.

Latour’s photographs showcase the biological sculptures in locations—either indoors or out in the world—where even when surrounded by the nature they are drawn from, the angular arms feel congruously out of place. “They all belong to the same speculative ecology,” Latour says, “as if they’re temporary emissaries from a parallel natural world.”