Private Story
Tucked into the Garden Bed - WIP
| (2020- ) There is wilderness beyond the tree line, outside my scope and reach. Tall fences surround a garden, dark, unbreakable mystery. The layers of my being unraveling like many pink petals of spring. I’m holding on to that fleeting thing. Like the butterfly with holes in its wings, only dust between my fingers. I learned that I cannot keep. During the summer of COVID-19, I took refuge in gardens near my parent’s house, witnessing the full cycle; from the first spears of growth until their inevitable demise. Is there a way to preserve beauty beyond its time? I took pictures of what I saw there, trying to capture the essence of place, and myself in it. Entranced by the vibrancy of the summer season, I turned to the Anthotype photographic process. Using the flower’s pigment to make light-sensitive emulsions, my garden photographs were then impressed upon the botanical distillations by the sun’s rays. I admired the flowers, but in the end, I used them in order to create, to make something more lasting than a bloom. The process became an obsession, an act of collection and preservation before the season's end. The results are like fossils, emphasizing the photograph’s inherent stillness and marked "death" of the subject. This summer in gardens initially provided a counterbalance to personal and greater uncertainties, and became an exercise in acceptance, of petals falling to the ground. |
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