Green Monster
Once I heard very interesting story by one Japanese photographer. It's
about his experience staying in the Jungle for photo shooting. According
to him, trees surrounded him looked a dreadful monsters when the physical
condition was not good. Of course, there was an opposite case. When he
was healthy physically or mentally, the nature around him looked so calm
and peaceful, he said.
I could understand it very well. Maybe me myself had similar experience.
Basically, an animal had more diverse figure than a human. A plant had
much more various, or even strange, figure than an animal. I must be like
a monster sometime.
After all, whether you feel like "I'm not alone in jungle. 'Cos I'm
surrounded by hundreds of lives" or "I'm so scared for being
watched by weird trees from darkness" it's depends on a personal emotion.
Then I remembered German photographer Karl Blossfeldt's (1865-1932) works.
It's a series of still-life photos of small plant placed in front of simple
brown cardboard back ground and taken by his home made camera. They were
small structures of plant like leaves, stems or buds. The shapes gave me
full of imagination. Some looked like singing woman or steel coil spring,
and the others looked like architecture . It's interesting because once
I got thinking it looked like something, it wasn't definitely anything
else.
It's fun seeing nature around you with imagination. Even if it's a road
side tree trimmed by gardener, it became looking like something else.
And this is an easy and inexpensive training for brushing up my imagination.
Jun. 2009
Today's piece
" Green Monster #2 " Saitama , Japan 2009 |