So, A quick recap on my sunflower project.
The brief was called 'The Last Flower' and the objective was to capture and document a flower (of our choosing) in any and every way possible, and record this documentation so that people can get a sense of the flower after it has gone.
Being that the London winter (which makes me miserable) is still with us, I chose a sunflower, representing the sun and summer and new life and energy. I quickly grew fond of my flower and did some drawings and got a sense of its shape and presence visually.
I researched information about the Sunflower (Helianthus Annus) and looked into the mathematics of the arrangement of seeds in the seed head. Above is Vogel's model, the equation:
Where θ is the angle, r is the radius or distance from the center, and n is the index number of the floret and c is a constant scaling factor. It is a form of Fermat's spiral. The angle 137.5° is related to the golden ratio (55/144 of a circular angle, where 55 and 144 are Fibonacci numbers) and gives a close packing of florets.
The flower lived with me, in my room. Next to a windowsill that overlooks our lovely back garden, in which we spend all our time during the summer months... BBQ's, Gin&Tonics, the occasional joint, music, eating, breakfast coffees and cigarettes, sleeping on rugs, playing with cats, attempted gardening and of course our failed vegetable patch. Its the most used 'room' of the house in the summer.
So this brief very quickly became about the seasons and the transition from summer to winter... we are all longing for summer now and can feel it is on the way. The sunflower became a symbol of the summer, visually it obviously resembles the sun, but for me personally it became
my sun. The flower sat on my record player by the window, every time I looked out of the window onto the winter outside I was confronted by this resilient and surprisingly sturdy symbol of the summer and the power of the sun.
While still getting to know my flower, the outcome I would chose became obvious, and I started to understand the brief... this was about forming a relationship with the flower, caring about it, understanding it and giving a shit about it... If I was to make people understand and care (even relate) to my flower than I had to do those things myself.
I decided that whatever my outcome I must take some pictures of the flower looking so beautiful, powerful, summery, warm and ALIVE!
I photographed the flower out on a windowsill overlooking the trees at the end of our garden, used a simple setup with a remote flash (on tripod, around 60 degree angle to the left of the camera, with a large bounce dish that I made a few months ago to soften the light)... To capture the wonderful colour and allow easy and accurate representation of the yellows I shot these pictures in digital.
One element I was keen on about this brief was the recording of the death and demise of my flower. I have recently lost a close friend, I am familiar with loss but this was the first time a friend, someone so young, has passed away. Of course I was really upset and amazed at the unfairness of such a thing... in time I will feel better and the only positive thing to take from such an experience is to enjoy every day and take it as a reminder about the fragility of life and the finite nature of our existence.
I am a big believer that, in the West, anyway, we hide away death... we all think we're invincible, or we're too busy to be told otherwise. We put our old people away in sad old people's homes and youth is considered everything. Death itself is an affront to our lifestyle, culture and subconscious beliefs that life is infinite and we are invincible... I don't know what this says about our culture... or I don't want to get into that now, anyway, but I'm interested in recording the death and fragility of my Sunflower.
...(a few days later)
Its a week or so old now... dying a lot quicker than I thought it would. Where the flower was once a beacon of life and summer and energy, its now looking a bit miserable, like a summer and an autumn compressed into a week... winter is surely coming for this flower. How strange that only a number of days ago this flower was described in my notes as being "full of life and powerful" with bright greens and yellows.
I have decided to document the decay of this flower... I want to capture the winter, fragility, approaching death, signs of age and aging that the flower is showing.
For these photographs I used the same location (a third floor windowsill with the beautiful trees at the end of the garden as a backdrop, I used the same remote flash setup for continuity but I shot the pictures in medium format film on my lovely Mamiya 645). For those of you who care, I used my favorite film Ilford PanF50... low ISO for use with flash.
The photographs came out so well... I even wrote down the setup. I've been using film more and more lately and have resigned my Digital SLR to being used as a light meter for the film cameras!
The final outcome is obvious now, the pictures alone are strong enough and statement enough about the experience I have been through with this flower and what it represents to me.
Colour photographs representing the life of the flower and Black and white photographs representing the death.
My final outcomes haven't been printed yet, I'm thinking about working with some nice silk/semi-gloss paper and a digital c-type print for ultimate image quality and colour.
Sunflower Life!
