Capturing the Changing Seasons

Posted in People on February 10 2009, by Plant Talk

Sally Armstrong Leone is Editorial Director at The New York Botanical Garden.

The renowned American philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “…every hour and season yields its tribute of delight” in Nature (1836), his statement of the sublimity of our seasons.

These words have instructed and inspired photographer Lawrence Lederman, a member of the Botanical Garden’s Board of Advisors who has spent the past seven years capturing the beauty and diversity of the Garden throughout the seasons. “By now I know the places to look for change, but there are always delightful surprises.” His poetic images reveal the intricacy of the way light works within a garden or landscape. “Spring is sensual,” he notes, but there is year-round interest that keeps him coming back, such as the brilliance of fall color or the silhouettes after a snowfall.

Lederman, a Brooklyn native, was educated in the New York City public schools. After Stuyvesant High School, he attended Brooklyn College. He studied law at New York University School of Law where he was an editor of the Law Review. To round out his education, he spent one year in San Francisco as the law clerk for the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court before returning to live and practice law in New York. Currently of counsel in the New York office of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP, he is a Distinguished Adjunct Professor at New York Law School. He is also the author of Tombstones: A Lawyer’s Tales from the Takeover Decades (1992), an account of his days as one of the most active corporate and mergers and acquisitions lawyers in the country.

Lederman and his wife, interior designer Kitty Hawks, divide their time between New York City and Westchester County. It was at the latter in about 2001 where he developed his interest in photography and pursued this avocation avidly. Fascinated by the shadows in his own backyard, he experimented endlessly with shape and form. He discovered that in the right light, trees took on the shapes of animals; trying to capture them became a game, which trained him to use his camera. In 2003 the Botanical Garden published his first calendar, Woodland Creatures, which led to his annual series, Trees. In May 2008 Lederman was a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome, where among other subjects, he photographed the Academy’s gardens and the Roman Campagna.

Over the years, Lederman’s cameras and accessories have changed with the times. He is self taught. “I went high tech,” he comments, “because I’m not capable of being low tech, not adept at working with chemicals in a darkroom.”

Photos © Lawrence Lederman, All Rights Reserved