The Archivist Orchidist

Biochemistry professor Bernard Trumpower has an eye for orchids. Most Friday afternoons you’ll find him in the fourth-floor murdough Greenhouses in the Class of 1978 Life Sciences Center, camera at the ready as he shoots the Brout Orchid Collection. To date the photography buff has captured 7,000 images of 500 plants. He expects it’ll take two more years to complete his goal of photographing all 1,000 orchids in the collection. “I began by thinking about various photography projects that would be relatively long term and give an in-depth view of something that has artistic qualities,” Trumpower explains. “I thus began this project to explore the artistic possibilities of the orchids, knowing that there were many orchids in the collection and that there was a lot of variety.” Thirty-three of his images were displayed recently at Hanover’s Howe Library, leading one reviewer to write: “The plants are like something captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. The prints bring the blooms to nearly human size, and they seem so alien, so alive that a viewer is forced to reckon with them.” (For examples, see pages 2-3.) The orchid collection, a 1996 gift from Alan Brout ’51, is open to the public weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.

90 Estimated years the Collis Elm stood; the giant tree was removed in January due to disease

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