BEAUTY IN THE TIME OF COVID
In the first spring of COVID-19, in March -April of 2020, each of us sought ways to cope personally, as well as professionally, with a pandemic’s existence and the fear and changes it brought to our lives and living.
As for me, my self-help therapy was a fresh-air walk each day in my urban neighborhood of Washington, DC, with DSLR camera and cellphone. It is no surprise to me - nor perhaps to you if you have viewed my exhibition portfolios here on my website - that I am attracted to the natural environment and so turned to documenting in my own way what I see in nature that sustains and lifts me spiritually in such concerning times.
I have seen in the media many insightful, impressive photographic studies depicting the rampant isolation and loneliness many in our community and society have experienced due to Covid-19; and their collective body of photographic work on the negative side of Covid-19 makes sense as a reflection of the times.
I felt that if I could find beauty in the time of Covid, it could provide solace. It has been very rewarding to get feedback from site visitors that these flower images made them feel good or uplifted, as well.
Increasingly, I became drawn to the ephemeral inner beauty of spring flowers that dotted the urban landscape here and there in yards, around trees, through iron fences along the city streets and sidewalks I walked each day.
The Au Printemps Suite that you see below is a collection of those images of spring flowers. They are straight photographs, mostly macro, and become abstract images by the way I frame them. By looking beyond realistic appearance, an astonishingly varied inner essence is revealed, with sinuous rhythms of patterns, colors and shapes overlaid with an interplay of light and shadow effects. In other words, metaphorically speaking, in peeling back the outer layer of spring flowers - of anything, really - we may discover something of beauty in its own right.
