Tag

life and death

vegetation: steady company

By | photography

Plants surround us, nearly always. But most people don’t notice. I myself  look at plants all the time; can’t help photographing them too. Whatever subject I’m working on. Their forms fascinate me, especially untamed. For we try to impose our shortsighted ideas about beauty and neatness upon them. We put them in straight rows, we clip their branches, we even use the chainsaw to cut down in a few minutes what took maybe centuries to grow. And for what, what ugliness takes its place? I like the way vegetation fills the spaces we leave to it, there’s drama and vitality in the way plants struggle to survive our combined efforts to select, replace or reshape them. They are our steady company. Living at a different pace they remind us of life and death. Their apparent chaos is just order of a different kind, not recognised by most of us…