Sunday, May 10, 2009

Botanical Garden - Part 2




















(copyright Rene Burri/Magnum Photos)

Last time I went to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, I took a bunch of images of trees and bushes in bloom. The cherry trees were covered in a light pink, the magnolia flowers whitening bushy trees and other allergy-inducing greens. And then I lost those images due to data transfer problems. I should really know my CF cards by now. Sigh. 

So I revisited the space. The petals of the cherry blossoms were now carpeting the ground and what was left of them on the trees had turned into tiny green cherries. The magnolia flowers had been replaced with new green shoots. And I had to retreat into the winter gardens to rekindle some of  that infant-like enthusiasm that I came with the first tiem. 

I tried to re-capture some of the shots I had lost and find new shots that I had missed the first tiem. And this time I went inspired by an image of Rene Burri's (taken in Beijing in 1964. It's titled "Former Summer Palace. Dead lotus flowers on the Kunming Lake"), see above. I recently discovered this photographer while roaming around the few photography books in Barnes and Noble and have utterly fallen in love with the framing and playfulness of his photographs. 

I've been fascinated with colors and textures lately, probably because the sun has finally come out and I feel like I'm a human being again; but also because of the William Eggleston exhibition I went to a while back and the video cameras I've been playing around with lately. While I still think that characters are more powerful in images, I like the introversion and thought processes that go into photographing inanimate objects, citiscapes and other objects that are somewhere for you to find. 

Whatever it is, find below a selection of images from that day. You can find the whole set, with other (sillier) images on my flickr account

IMG_1547

IMG_1556

botanical_garden6

botanical_garden4

IMG_1461

IMG_1558

No comments: