Photo Flash: First Look at Photography from Joel Grey's THE FLOWER WHISPERER

As BroadwayWorld previously reported, PowerHouse Books has just released Academy Award, Tony Award®, and Golden Globe Award® winning performer, director and photographer Joel Grey's The Flower Whisperer his fifth book of photographs. In conjunction with the book release, a companion photo exhibition opens today at SoHo's Staley-Wise Gallery (100 Crosby Street), featuring photographs from the book (along with additional photos).

Grey's early passion for flowers and plants helped form a lifelong love for nature's beauty. From the tender age of just 10 years old, Grey recalls a childhood spent poring over seed catalogs searching for the perfect flower he hoped to someday nurture with love. Growing up adjoining an undeveloped parcel of land just outside of Cleveland, Ohio, Grey enjoyed the magic and splendor of flora while exploring this dark and somehow inviting mini-forest. Searching through weeds and tall grasses, his prize was occasionally his all-time-favorite, a lily of the valley in full bloom.

Today, Grey is a favorite of his local New York City flower market where he can be found regularly indulging his passion. Grey celebrates the fascinating and unique sexuality of these flowers with intimate views of their petals, pistils, and
stamens. Shot entirely on his iPhone, The Flower Whisperer is Grey's personal testament to the mysterious sexual universe of flowers.

With a deep-rooted love for painterly abstraction, Grey's observations of tulips, roses, poppies, calla lilies, ranunculuses, daffodils, sunflowers, hydrangeas, daisies, and of course Grey's revered lily of the valley among many others, echo the feeling of the watercolors he has always yearned to create.

Below, check out selections from the new book, all of which are from The Flower Whisperer by Joel Grey, published by powerHouse Books.