Perhaps the most recognized and widely-collected photographer of botanical studies working today, Ron van Dongen?s recent shift to color work was documented in our previous monograph, Effusus, which was published in 2005 and has since sold out. His follow-up book, Aurora, presenting 33 gorgeous new plates printed ? as with all of his Nazraeli Press monographs ? in an oversized format bound in Japanese cloth. This new work adds to the Dutch photographer?s long and skilled study of flora in its many incarnations. Ron van Dongen?s work has been the subject of ten monographs, and is widely exhibited and collected throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. It has been featured in such publications as Provacateur, Foto Nederland, Martha Steward Living, and Bloom. ?This is superb formal photography, a melding of elegant observation with attention to form and fragility, and yielding the deep beauty that arises from such single-minded observation: a precise observation of the physical world, whose precision invokes both the sensual and the spiritual.? ? Katherine R. Lieber, ArtScope Hardcover, 14 x 17, 52 pages, 33 four-color plates.