Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Beginning to Bloom (16/366)







Of all of the pictures I studied in my art history classes, Lewis Hines' photo of a tenement family working together to make artificial flowers has always been one of my favourites.  This image is so evocative:  the adults and children bending over together in the late evening light, the fluffy little flowers becoming the family's daily bread.  It's somehow absurd and starkly beautiful; I rarely see an artificial flower but I think of those tenement families.

These paper flowers have been sitting on my office window since I arrived, and I'd always ignored them before.  But today there was something so interesting about them: they are thick and fibery, and seem to be from different era than those noisy silk ones that fray at the edges.  This particular one seems to be pushing itself up towards the light, like a schoolgirl working at her kitchen table.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

omg, those are paper? seriously? that's a beautiful shot and it's hard to tell that they're fake.