Floralia

The world shutting down all around me, I was left with a solitary boon of flowers.  Short work for sprightly hermits, I had a picnic with me cats. Not above spreading a sheet on the parquet and having a lounge in the lace-dappled light.

The quantity of fava beans I had boiled to feed our now-cancelled vegan models could have fed a swole army, so I whipped up some bessara.

Then, intoxicated with the odor of sweetpeas, the early year sunlight through shimmering drapes, and the surplus of it all… I flowered until exhaustion felled me. Rested, swept up, repeated the next day.

Part hedonistic flower worship, part bowing to the relentlessly short life of the medium. This was no time for restraint, but as the bud could no longer hold back neither could I.

Weddings tend to hold off until summer, no doubt because it’s easier to gather all the relatives then. But in our climate, that’s a pity. My favorite selections are to be had somewhere between late January and May, by June it’s all back to parched, fields gone to hay and flowers looking equally sad droughty or drought tolerant.

Peach, burnt orange, and purple, or variations on the analogous colour scheme purple/red/orange are a perennial favorite with me. Enjoy here fritillaria meleagris, Rosa Cafe Latte, a great range of ranunculi, Japanese sweet peas and spray roses in dusty pink to beige, nerine lily, butterfly ranunculus, a distant tangle of redbud, and more. A bacchanalia of flowers…

A floral meadow: romantic portrait shoot

Late last spring I heard from Jackie … she had a Simone Rocha dress that needed some flowers and a redhead.

I was dreaming of a frenzied magenta field, clashing patterns, some kind of storm in the calm of a pastoral afternoon.

Driving into the unknown armed with buckets I found a field of white calla lilies and enriched it in a way that made me think of an altar, the end of a certain Almodóvar film that stayed with me through the years and the genres. A hint of trashiness is my amulet.

I like to think of a photo not as a way of capturing what’s already there but of making a new reality.  Becoming something else, seeing oneself in a new light...  It can be temporary or permanent.

Fantasy as a tool of self-transformation, fantasy not simply dreamt but acted upon. And between vision and daily exertion, the flowers I dreamed of are here.

Credits: Art direction and styling in collaboration with Jacqueline Tierney. Model: Lilia. These photos & florals by me.

Ruins of the Late Autumn Table

Morning light on the ruins…