Left in the hands of nature by residents fleeing Tehran, these ordinary houses have become backdrops for an extraordinary series of photographs by Gohar Dashti, born during the Islamic Revolution.

Dubbed Home, the series is about the power of nature in the wake of human absence. She was inspired to begin the project after returning to her hometown and discovering a single plant on the deck of a neighboring house.

“It had flourished in their absence,” she recalls, “and its neck now curved against its own weight. It had the power to stay there. Left alone, it would eventually consume and conquer the home.” From there, she began to shoot organic scenes as well as staged setups to illustrate the overwhelming forces of nature, extrapolating reclamation based on a combination of reality and imagination.

More about the artist: “Gohar Dashti received her M.A. in Photography from the Fine Art University of Tehran in 2005. After studying photography in Iran, she has spent the last 14 years making the large scale of her practice concerning in social issues with particular references to history and culture through a convergence of interest in anthropology and sociology.”

“She tries with her own means to express the world around her. Her starting point is always her surrounding, her memory, but with her very personal perception of things. She tries to trace her relationship to society and the world in it’s most sensitive way. Her practice continuously develops from life events and connection between the personal and the universal, the political and the fantasised.”

Alternately beautiful and disgusting but nearly always fascinating, works of art that use nature in place of more traditional media raise questions about the power and responsibility of human dominance over our natural surroundings and the other species living on Earth. These living, breathing works of art might be innocently pretty, like modified flower petals or arrangements of colorful mushrooms, or they might feel a little more sinister, making controversial use of living mice, insects or bacteria swabbed from human orifices.

What’s your take on the use of living things as art? Do you believe the message justifies its potential death, even if it’s a bonsai tree or an ant?

Philodendron Xanad by Ruben Bellinkx

The lush green leaves of a living philodendron plant seem to have pierced right through a wall in a confounding installation by Belgium-based artist Ruben Bellinkx. The leaves, as you can see, are much too large and seemingly undamaged to have been forced through small holes in the walls – so how’d he do it? Quite simply, the artist rebuilt that section of the wall from scratch, cutting careful slits following the contours of the leaves with a jigsaw.

Jeweled Larval Cocoons by Hubert Duprat

When placed in an aquarium with nothing but gold, turquoise and pearls to make their cocoons from, caddisfly larvae will build themselves jeweled enclosures that end up looking like tiny sculptural treasures when they’re done. Artist Hubert Duprat ‘collaborated’ with the Trichopteres larva to produce the final results, which are held together with silk excreted from their salivary glands. The larvae spend a few weeks inside these jeweled cocoons before emerging as mature flies.

The Life and Death of Botanicals: 6 Works by Azuma Makoto

Artist Azuma Makoto is known for incorporating live and cut flowers, vines, bonsai trees and even full-scale palm trees into his botanical works of art, often contrasting themes of vitality and decay. For an exhibit entitled ‘Drop Time’ at the Mass Gallery in Tokyo, Makoto created beautiful bouquets and placed them inside acrylic boxes so their slow decay could be observed through all its stages. Another floral exhibit, ‘Iced Flowers,’ temporarily preserved bouquets inside blocks of ice.

For ‘Sephirothic Flower,’ Makoto took lush floral arrangements deep beneath the surface of the sea and photographed them in the dark waters, capturing their interactions with sea creatures like eels.

Makoto has even launched plants into space. ‘EXOBIOTANICA 2’ saw bouquets lifted beyond the Earth’s atmosphere using weather balloons, and the original EXOBIOTANICA did the same with a Japanese white pine bonsai inside a carbon fiber frame.

Somehow, the artist’s installation of a living bonsai inside an abandoned power plant feels just as momentous as those outer space shots, embodying a hopeful message about life springing eternal.

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A single sweeping shot seems to capture an entire spring season of blooming flowers in this artfully directed time-lapse video, which took three years to record and complete. Filmmaker Jamie Scott captured almost all of the footage on a soundstage in the closet of his New York home, often against a black backdrop, placing the flowers in stark relief as they unfurl.

The sped-up result almost makes them look like sea creatures waving around under the sea, tentatively opening and then closing again as the camera passes over them. Scott started out filming the flowers from the front, but realized the effect was more dramatic if he shot them from above instead, shifting focus as he went.

In a behind-the-scenes interview with F-stoppers, Scott explains that he made the film in contrast to his previous time-lapse work entitled Fall. The difference between the two films isn’t just the season, but also the close-up shots, shallow depth of field, classical score and placing the camera on a slider.

Step beneath these massive red flowers in Jerusalem’s Vallero Square and they’ll bloom before your eyes, offering light after dark and shelter from the rain. The interactive installation by HQ Architects reacts to pedestrians and traffic, their crimson textile petals filling with air when motion is sensed nearby.

Standing 30 feet tall in two pairs on opposite ends of the square, the flowers can be seen from afar, providing an eye-catching visual for visitors to a busy nearby market. In addition to functioning as public art and street lights, the flowers provide cover to commuters getting on and off the tram.

When the square is full of action, the flowers billow, creating a sense of movement. They go still when all is quiet late at night, their petals closing. An air compressor is built into the top of each one. Named the ‘Warde Project,’ the installation is part of an effort to revitalize a square that felt a little shabby. [Photos by Dor Kedmi]

A novel take on a New Year’s staple, crafty photography and flower power, these bright botanical arrangements (set against dark night-like) backgrounds seem to burst in midair.

This Flowerwork photo series from Berlin-based artist Sarah Illenberger stemmed from her combined interest in art, photography and graphic design as well as a fascination with other dimensions of everyday options.

Working together with photographer Sabrina Rynas, buds and blossoms were set against a faux night sky, appearing to be much larger fireworks shot from off-screen at first glance. In some cases the stems trail like streamers or one plant seems nested in another like some kind of grand finale.

More about the artist: “Sarah Illenberger is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Berlin working at the intersection of art, graphic design, and photography. With a focus on analog craftwork using everyday items, Sarah is renowned for creating vivid, witty images that open up new perspectives on seemingly familiar subjects.”

“Her ability to transform ordinary materials into complex and unexpected visual experiences has been utilized to develop concepts for clients from the fields of culture and business in several countries. In her aim to explore the fertile overlap between art and design, she’s collaborated with numerous photographers and artists, and filled exhibition spaces with self-initiated projects in Paris, Tokyo, and Berlin.”