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…
Let’s see now, big leaves, enclosure, vague light in the background. A scene from childhood when you were still smaller than most plants around you. Close to water, maybe, you’ve seen such plants there, and there’s that light… On the photograph is just an imprint of what was before me, before the camera as Garry rightfully said… No more than that… Can’t show what’s not there. Light on surface. You have your thoughts, lookthink. You may think: this looks like rhubarb, right, maybe you think this is from a dream you were once in. You may think: no rain on your face under the big leaf; find shelter together with the insects on the moist ground, the light gets less because it rains, home not far, safe. Take four: now you touch the leaves as you stand up and look at the trees beyond. It’s all valid. It’s there if you want, here’s the picture: the image is of another day under a different sky. I can’t reach you, you can reach yourself, you make the connections, you make it work. I just give you the image. Look… And think.
My redesigned photosite is online, and the first two series presented are house parties and vegetation. The very up-to-date design chosen by |r|ocketclowns allows for the photographs to be shown on a surprisingly large format, and I like the navigation, that is both transparent and logical. To enable some explication, the occasional comment and a few necessary notes, I will add texts (aimed at photography insiders as well as interested newcomers to my photography) by means of this blog. The choice for the separation of words and images was made so as to not interrupt the flow of photographs. The blog which replaces the texts of the original site will be all the more versatile for it, hopefully more readable, and certainly more informative because searchable. I sincerely hope you will enjoy all of it, so do take a looooong look, and come back as often as you like for images and texts. I’m sure the website will get ever more interesting as it grows…and I’ll try to keep in mind what I myself would like to see and read about, trying not to repeat myself. Just in case, if you haven’t found it yet, www.tomstappers.com .