Botany Still-Life Series
The plant world is an enigma of life that is easily overlooked. They are everywhere and plentiful by their own doing, yet not always acknowledged for their importance. Planting a seed smaller than a gram can produce handfuls of nutrient food, provide the vitality of life as oxygen and most importantly provide successive seeds to propagate more.
We are increasingly dependent on technology and materials that we ourselves create, compared to the people of our past who depended on the self-creating and manifesting plants to provide many resources. Observant ancestors found out how to influence and alter the growing of some plants, and in result have more yielding variations and they learned of new uses for these flora.
The naturally determined sprouts follow nature's directive and cues from their environment and can grow as if they know intuitively what to do. The manifestation of plants is a gift; without it we would live in a world of depleting resources.
The carbon in vegetation is what returns to the earth to propel the next generations of plants. What a superior technology biological entities like plants are, which are self-growing, self-healing and self-propagating. If they are maimed, they grow twice as tenacious. What if we could find other technologies that are more in line with the expanding nature of plants instead of the consuming technologies we depend on today.
If anything, people are not a parasite like the aphids, but a symbiotic partner that guides the plants for the benefit of both themselves and the flora. Ultimately though, we are the dependents who would lose everything if the plants for some reason no longer functioned at an exponential growth. Would self-replicating robots be the closest thing to how plants function? Plants are more efficient than that, because like all living beings, they accept their temporality and engage the life and death cycle for the betterment of a species. Plants are the ultimate givers, who teach that one must die so that others may live, and that there is something to gain by giving.
Seedling Series: Tomato, Mustard, Dino Kale, Amaranth, Coriander, Bibb Lettuce, 2021. Digital Photographs.
Knowing the potential of a seed, just one can provide a whole lineage of vitality. The mystery of growth should be inspiring us along with of the decay and entropy of our world, the dichotomy is unavoidable.
Seedling Series
Digital Photography- April 2021
These digital images are intimate still-life photographs of life-giving plants resting on a platform, showing off their entire structure from leaf to root. Each plant is unique but follows common characteristics of that genus, and each plant is fragile and young yet holds the potential to grow much larger.
Seedling Series: Spinach, 2021. Digital Photography.
Like people, plants can be supple or hardy... they either give in or resist their environment. Sometimes giving in is a better choice, as the plants show. They have no choice in the uprooting, but like a wise old Philosopher of Wu Wei they find harmony in non-resistance. They only give and grow, they take at times, but always give back everything in the end, returning to the earth that provides its substrate.
Seedling Series: Ground Cherry, 2021. Digital Photography.
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