Naples Daily News Posted on April 17, 2004

To Florida's orchids, with love

Connie Bransilver's book wants to convey the spell native blooms hold for humans
By CAROLYN E. ALDEN, Special to the Daily News

"Orchid books are too numerous to count, but none, so far as I have found, takes me where I want to go, into the realm of the spirit, on a ride, on a wild love affair with orchids and wilderness, across to an acquaintance with both the beauty and the wildness in my own heart."
— Connie Bransilver, from "Wild Love Affair: Essence of Florida's Native Orchids"

Connie Bransilver's new book, "Wild Love Affair: Essence of Florida's Native Orchids," which was scheduled for publication in mid-April (Westcliff Publishers; $40), promises more than a look at the world of orchids. As described on the dust jacket, "It is a journey into the very soul of wilderness and a reflection of the power and grace of the human spirit."

An author, photographer and naturalist, Bransilver's goal in writing "Wild Love Affair" was to combine text with photographs of Florida's native orchids in such a way that the reader would be taken into a different dimension, into a different way of looking at orchids. Rather than taking botanical photographs and combining them with scientific text, Bransilver explains, she sought, the book dust jacket says, to "explore wilderness, and wilderness is not perfect — the essence of what is attractive, erotic, untamable about these orchids is also in ourselves. I want to take us to a place where we can shed our inhibitions."

"Realists will not like the orchid photos in this book. Dreamers will," says Bransilver. In writing this love story between humans and wild orchids, Bransilver sought to explain the reason for the compelling, almost addictive, hold orchids have over humans.

"I wanted to search for my own spiritual connection to wilderness," she explains further, "for the link between humans and their environment and for the emotional involvement that precedes love, respect and commitment to a landscape and to a place."

Bransilver will be offering a multimedia presentation and readings from "Wild Love Affair" at the May 6 meeting of the Naples Orchid Society. Filled with photographs of Florida native orchids found primarily in Collier County, the book begins with basic scientific information, but quickly jumps into orchid lore.

It tells real stories of some of Southwest Florida's colorful orchid lovers, such as the late Oscar Thompson, Wyn Turner and Scott Stewart. She cites a plaintive lament by Oscar Thompson, who lived his entire life on the edge of the Everglades, regarding the pollution of the River of Grass: " I never thought it would come to this. They can never restore the Everglades to what it once was."

With a forward by fellow orchid photographer Eric Hansen, author of "Orchid Fever: A Horticultural Tale of Love, Lust and Lunacy," and a preface by Stuart Pimm, Ph.D., Duke University chair of conservation ecology, the book also contains an essay entitled "Wild Orchids in Southern Florida" by Paul Martin Brown, author of "Wild Orchids of Florida," and another entitled "Orchid Conservation, Economics and Research" by John Beckner, a botanist at Selby Gardens in Sarasota.

As an ardent naturalist and conservationist, Bransilver had another purpose in writing this book, she says in an explanation on its dust jacket: to "illustrate the importance and complexity of orchid conservation and reveal the vital need for all of us to seek and cherish the beauty and wilderness around us and in our hearts."

Bransilver serves on the board of directors of the North American Nature Photography Association and the Native Orchid Restoration Project. She is active in the Jane Goodall Institute and the Duke University Primate Center.

Other projects in which Bransilver is involved are a video series entitled "Wild Women/Wild Animals," featuring women who work with animals, and a National Geographic project in Madagascar in which Bransilver has been involved for more than four years photographing a newly discovered subspecies of lemur.

Bransilver, working with printer Mark Lukes, owner of Fine Print in Fort Collins, Colo., has applied two new photographic techniques to make her work so memorable: lumira print, which creates punchy, vibrant prints with an archival life of 70 years, and giclee prints, a process which uses subtle, natural color to create avante garde, romantic, soft prints. Bransilver's company, Artemis Images, can be found at www.ConnieBransilver.com.

Bransilver came upon her profession as a nature photographer by a long, circuitous, almost serendipitous route. Born and raised in New Mexico and graduating from law school at the University of New Mexico, Bransilver moved with her family to London, England. Expecting to stay a year or two, Bransilver lived there for more than 12 years.

Like most wives and mothers, Bransilver took family photos but, according to her daughter, Holly, hers were never just average.

When the marriage ended and she returned to the United States, Bransilver decided to let her creative side take over, and began studying photography at the Corcoran School of Art and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The rest, as they say, is history.

Carolyn E. Alden and Kit Kitchen-Maran are members of the Naples Orchid Society, http://www.naples.net/orchids/ which meets in the Conservancy Auditorium at 7 p.m. the first Thursday of the month.