Nature's Pencil Print Club

Matthew Morrocco's analog inspirations

Matthew Morrocco

Hey friends, it’s cold and sunny in Madison today. How’s everybody doing? Just a quick note — something inspiring to kick off the weekend…

I like to highlight photography friends from time to time, and since many of you are print makers, I thought you’d appreciate this. I’ve mentioned my paper addiction before, so you can imagine my delight when I received a handmade package in the post a few weeks ago. Matthew Morrocco kindly shared his first Nature’s Pencil Print Club mailing with me, and I was so touched that I wanted to share it with you here. His 5x7 print was accompanied by this letter:

Dear Patron -

It’s January 1st, and I’m so excited to send you the first iteration of my monthly mail club dedicated to photography.

The art of photography is essential to our world today and yet so undervalued. Print magazines are increasingly downsizing, and galleries hardly show photographs. Still, some new photographs remind us of photography’s resonance as an artform.

In December, Vanity Fair ran a piece about the presidential cabinet that went viral. It was shot by Christopher Anderson, who is mostly known as a war photographer. The layout and structure of these photographs are very similar to a piece from 2002 on George W. Bush’s cabinet, photographed by Annie Leibovitz. Many words have been used to describe the 2025 article, ranging from “hit piece” to “glorious.” But above all, the context we must remember when viewing these photographs is that a camera cannot record things that are not there. This is especially pertinent when a subject is responsible for their appearance – makeup, clothing choices, and how recently they went to their injector. Photographers construct images with lights, angles, and framing choices, but the responsibility of how we show up in the world rests squarely on our own shoulders.

Photography is the art of life. Photographs hold memories. They remind us of old outfits and hairstyles, momentous occasions, and relatives we’ll never see again. These letters will be dedicated not only to inspiring you to live your life each day with a little bit of magic but to help elucidate the very quotidian art of photography.

The title of my print club, Nature’s Pencil, comes from the first ever published book of photographs, “The Pencil of Nature,” by Henry Fox Talbot, where he discusses the camera’s ability to render nature more accurately than a pencil. Published in 1844, “The Pencil of Nature” was intended to showcase photography’s grandiose possibilities as an artform.

To kick things off, I am sending you a photograph that I made in 2023 when I started learning Ikebana, the ancient art of arranging flowers. Invented in China, and safeguarded from the 7th century until today by the Japanese, ikebana is an artform used to find peace in living with nature. Shot on 4x5 film, this photograph is made with white dahlias from True Love Farms, a 19th-century lithograph from a book on canaries I purchased in London, a cutout from a book on Degas, and a blue gradient background I made myself. As January begins, I thought you might enjoy this delicate little photograph as a reminder of the value art can have in resonating across time.

So welcome to my print club!! My greatest wish is that my work will find its way into the hands of people who care about art and the things they collect, not for their monetary value, but simply because, to them, it is perfect.

Isn’t that great?

I love promoting creative people and their projects, so I figured I’d give Matthew a boost. I know we all appreciate his commitment to craft, and I can vouch for the print he sent me — it’s quite lovely. Maybe you’ll consider supporting Matthew’s venture with a Nature’s Pencil Print Club subscription. Who doesn’t like getting some mail now and again? It certainly beats more mindless Instagram scrolling.

Thanks again for sharing your work with me, Matthew. I appreciate you!

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