Bouquet #8

I grew up in gardens, and the structure of flowers always fascinated me. Brightly colored organisms that bring forth life, made up of smaller forms, they have always felt like a good stand in for the smaller biological arena. All of life is made of various bodies, made up of smaller bodies, which in turn are made up of even smaller cells, which are the building blocks of life.

In the darkroom, I tear apart flowers that are meaningful to me, things that were in gardens I grew up in, or have other personal symbolism to me. I break them down into their elements, and make color photograms of the petals. In the studio, I cut these prints out piece by piece, following the petal structures on the page, so that I start with the “cells” to build structures from. Shapes and color grow and mutate from the individual petal “cells” into collaged organisms: in the case of The Bouquets, small collages on unexposed photographic paper. The pieces take on their own, new, forms, cellular in nature, but like all bodies, their own small universes.