Neither Patti Smith, Selby Gardens’ inaugural artist in residence, nor Lynn Goldsmith, whose exhibition, Shared Light, opened at the gardens June 18, can exactly remember the first time they met. It was sometime in the mid-1970s; Smith was an influential member of New York City’s punk rock movement and Goldsmith was a photographer gaining a reputation for her celebrity portraits, mostly of musicians.

As the oft-repeated story goes, after hearing someone badmouthing the photographer, Smith called Goldsmith up and said, “So…so-and-so says this about you. Therefore, I think you must be great!”

However apocryphal that tale may be, it was a meeting that catalyzed a friendship that has blossomed over decades. Goldsmith would end up taking the iconic cover photograph for Smith’s 1978 album, "Easter” and, more than four decades later, published Before Easter After, a visual survey of candid photos of Smith from the late ‘70s accompanied by Smith’s original poetry and lyrics.

In the current Selby Gardens show, Goldsmith juxtaposes intimate photos of Smith—some from the ‘70s, others more recent—with close-up images of the flowers she came to love as a child through her grandmother that were featured in her 2000 book, Flowers. The indoor/outdoor exhibition includes a gallery of color photos of Smith side by side with images of flowers in the garden museum; large-scale panels of pictures from Goldsmith’s Flowers scattered along a bayfront path; and black and white images of both subjects in the Selby House Cafe.

At the time they met, Goldsmith found Smith to be a refreshing change from her previous celebrity subjects.

“Most of the people I photographed then were so uncomfortable in front of the camera, especially the musicians,” says Goldsmith, who was in Sarasota last week for the opening of the Selby exhibition. “Patti was one of the few people I knew who was not only comfortable in front of a camera, but so present that my own creative juices were inspired.  I guess you could call that a muse.”

A quotation from Smith that adorns one wall in the Selby gallery captures the mutuality of the connection.

“Lynn was always game, with camera in hand,” Smith writes. “As her subject, I gave myself openly or was silently given permission to withdraw into another dimension. And wherever I chose to be, however present or distant, she got it. Moments, floating in water and emerging as photographs, never forgotten.”

Still, when Goldsmith was faced with idea of creating an exhibit involving Smith for Selby Gardens, she had to ask herself: “How does a botanical garden connect to Patti?” The answer she came to was “friendship.”

“For me, friendship goes through as many changes as the life of a flower,” she says.

Goldsmith says she intentionally selected photographs of Smith from 1975-1978 for the two gallery spaces instead of current ones “because it establishes that timeline of friendship for me.” Therefore, the first striking image you see when you enter the gallery’s front door, printed on semi-transparent material that hangs in front of a window, is of a youthful and ethereal Smith with flowers circling her head. 

One gallery room has a deep purple/violet theme (“the color of spirituality”); the other—which, in Goldsmith’s words “brings together the fragility and endurance that flowers and friendship have in common”—emphasizes deep scarlet/red hues. On one wall is a poem written by Goldsmith that begins: “Flowers and friendship—they ask the same thing of me; time, and a kind of faith that feels like waiting but isn’t.”

After years of photographing celebrities, Goldsmith says she came to a time in her life when “I wanted to get away from that.” Celebrity shoots always involved a lot of people on a set (agents, lighting artists, hairdressers, makeup artists), multiple cameras and lenses and a plethora of competing voices.

“I wanted to simplify,” Goldsmith explains. “I wanted to go out and make flowers with one camera and one lens. I just wanted it to be me and, as simple as possible, with just the available light. ”

All of the floral images in the show were taken with a single Nikon camera, film and one 50 mm. lens. They were taken not in studio settings, but “wherever the flowers were,” Goldsmith says, whether in her own garden or at the buzzing New York City flower market. Most were taken extremely close range, with the film “pushed” to create a grainy background and intense detail.

Featured on large panels beneath banyan trees, along a pathway that winds through the gardens along the bayfront, the floral photos move chromatically from “hot” yellows, to reds, to purples to a more pacific and “cooler” blues, greens and white.

“The path is a palette of color that makes you become more conscious of what’s around you,” Goldsmith says. “That was my motivation—to enhance with color all of that greenery, particularly at this time of year when things aren’t flowering.” 

Flowers, Goldsmith says, are like people to her, and the camera is “a tool that allows you to sometimes experience people and the world in ways you might not have otherwise.” Though today’s glut of Instagram photos and AI images can lead to disconnection and delusion, the camera for her has always been a way to be more present. 

“There are positives and negatives to everything. It’s about how much you’re going to go down the rabbit hole,” she says. “We’re confronted every day with the bigger question of, 'What’s the truth?'”

Her words, printed on one wall in the gallery, echo an answer.

“For me, photography is a means of writing with light; showing in order to tell," Goldsmith writes. "It’s a tool for awareness, though images will always deceive us because truth in its entirety cannot be condensed, summarized, or captured.”

Shared Light, a photo exhibition by Lynn Goldsmith, is on view at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, 1534 Mound Street, Sarasota, through Sept. 13. Open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Free to members; adults, $28; member guests and children 5-17, $12. (941) 366-5731, selby.org