Flowers, perhaps the most steadfast icon of beauty, hold a place in all nearly every genre of art, and most particularly, photography. I find that we often hold the same ideals for flower portraiture as we do when creating classic portraits of people. That is, we gravitate toward the crowning, young, symmetrical and unblemished specimens as our models, or in the alternative, we tend to those whose lives and experiences are written in their character lines, their sadnesses are etched in the drape of skin and carved by scars, and edges are worn away by the general fray and decay of life.
If, in flowers, we also look for an echo of emotion and for the reaching toward relationship manifested by gesture, position and pose, it is most often possible to find it with with flowers just as in human beings. Flowers can serve as a wonderfully succinct metaphor for the human condition.
The use of metaphor as a means of furthering connection and understanding is effective and universal. As humans we are conditioned to understand life through stories, and a metaphor is the tidiest, most concise and most compact story of any. A metaphor often consists of just a word or short phrase, but it comes packed with so much meaning that often explains mood or tone, personality, intention, and relationship. “The boy was a six ring circus,” tells us of this particular child’s hyperactivity, of his derring-do and we instantly understand that his parents and teachers probably have little hope of keeping him under any kind of control…all that in three words because the metaphor tells us a story.
So the question becomes, can we adequately represent the complexity of the human condition with the depiction of flowers. Can we show the joy of emotional connection, or the excitement of new discovery, or the melancholia of loneliness and isolation? I believe it is required of us to reach beyond the mere loveliness of a bloom and attempt to do just that. It is a challenge, the same challenge we face in all art. Art’s work is to tell stories as well, to engage the viewer, to show a new perspective or challenge time-worn assumptions. Flowers can become wonderful metaphors if we look deep enough and with enough sensitivity.
These flowers are from two albums of flowers. The idea was to convey, non-verbally, the act of connection through body language: in this case, the body language of flowers. We pay so much attention to the body language of our human subjects as portrait photographers, but often it doesn’t cross our minds with photographing flowers. I believe that is a missed opportunity. The work of an artist is to explore every possible avenue and then find more, and that’s a wonderful challenge in the case of photographing of a flower.
No Comments
Leave a comment Cancel