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POP

The object of this series is the seed capsules from the plant Large-leaved Lupine. And it brought itself into focus …

One day when I was resting outside, I heard a sound. First, it was far away, and something that could not really climb the “own” thoughts that I was in. Pop, it sounded. Again, and again. It could be someone shooting something far away, but once the sound managed to reach my consciousness, it convinced me that it came from the garden – my garden.

It was seed pods exploding in the sun and the heat. It was the explosion that sounded like pop, and that’s how the lupine spreads its seeds. The seeds are black and round like very small cannon balls. At a closer inspection I saw them on the dry soil. They were everywhere, and they gathered where the surface commanded them to roll.

That vision made me think of a photo by Roger Fenton, taken in 1855 during the Crimean War. The photo is titled “The Valley of the Shadow of Death”, and the motif is a barren and deserted landscape with cannon balls scattered all over, like having come down as rain.

That’s what I saw in my garden.

 But now only with the reverse sign: The seeds of the Lupins are “reverse” cannon balls. They are indications of life.

July 2019