There is something about the preciousness of youth and the the preciousness of flowers, how each passes like sand through an hourglass, changing and shifting with the drop of each grain. There is a vulnerability to each, but also a tenacity and an impressionability countered by a bold unique spirit.
Summer and the season of growing whisks past at a heart-thundering pace. Many blooms shine for just a few brief days or weeks and then they are gone, a memory of profound beauty. When they are just unfolding toward blossom they posses a mysterious unknown. They are preparing to show their face to the world, to reveal a glorious power, a full expression. It is the stress of heat, the response to being pruned, the experience of time that presses a bloom into being, toward its fullest articulation. From my perspective as a parent, after the age of three the clip of childhood can seem devastating. Everyday is something new, a hunger to learn, to grow, to experience and with the turn of each page our babes are growing into themselves, cultivating an independence, a curiosity outside of the box, however expansive, that we have shown and shared with them. They are revealing themselves to us, growing into themselves. It is with every moment a molding is occurring, They are figuring and finding who they are and want to be and become. They are trying on the different hats of identity and picking those that feel most familiar, most comfortable to be, what they share with the world, how they will face forward.
A few weeks ago as I wondered how I was going to chronicle the flowers I've grown this summer in my backyard mini-flower farm, I thought about all the dear friends of my daughters and dear daughters of my friends, there many expressions, the depth and sense of self they posses and pondered the potential of marrying the two. I asked a few friends if their dear ones might be willing to frolic on this fringe of enchantment, and so here we are with me gathering flowers from my garden and roaming the alleys near by to harvest the wild bounty before we draw and dapple the grasses with orbs and specks of botanical bits. I am so excited for the commencement of this project in earnest, to see all of these girls and flowers in similar repose, yet still so distinct.
It is a moment, in the time of flowers and in the time of youth, to preserve two kindred spirits of fleeting untold wonder. Often my nostalgic heart fills with the intriguing dream of time travel to the past. What if we could go back, delve just for a minute into the experience of some instant, unfold the layers of what has been. There is a way in which in making these images, I am hoping to hold on to all this that is fleeting. To let it wash over me and at the same time, when the flowers have wilted and the girls grown, their past will still be here looking me in the face. The passage of time will have ticked by and yet the rawness from whence they came will still be.