Public Story
Senescence
This project came to me in stages; it evolved as everything does. It started with the death of a friend. He was 24 and I was 42 and we shared the same name, Jared. I started to think about my mortality and future. In the first week after his passing I couldn’t sleep at night, so to occupy my mind I began to photograph a large sunflower that stood in a vase in my living room. Since it was late in the evening, instead of setting up a big production with lights, I grabbed a small flashlight, turned off all surrounding lights, and began to light-paint the petals of the sunflower while the shutter of the camera was open.
At first I photographed one large sunflower bloom. I initially wanted to examine all the details of this bloom and did so for a while until the petals became too wrinkled. I then pulled the camera back and photographed the aged bloom as a whole entity. The image that resulted is the book’s centerfold.
After one week I exhausted the image possibilities for the single, now very shriveled sunflower and went out into the garden to find other flowers to place in the vase. I thought of creating a calendar of twelve flowers yet as I continued to make images I kept finding new and different flowers to photograph. I continued this project for an entire year until sunflowers began to bloom once again.
This year-long project has been a way of mourning; not only for my friend who died too young, but also for my grandfather and aunt who passed away during the same year.
These portraits of aging flowers show the effects of time in a dramatic fashion. Through these images we can begin to see our loved ones and ourselves as we grow older. Age fades all blooms, but the essence and beauty of the individual remains until the end.
“Could that be it – right there, in the flower - the meaning of life?”
-Michael Pollan (The Botany of Desire)
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