Flower on a bagel

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Bagel on Third Ave

With a photo project, the more you push into it, the more it starts to feel inevitable. That's when you let go a little and allow your intuition take some of the weight. That's when I switch on automatic pilot and start to feel a kind of lightness.

I've been noticing the flower pictures around me for years now, and have started to make notes and reportage pictures of those pictures more seriously. I feel it gathering gravity. In fact, my awareness feels tweaked and tense: I find myself pulled into environments that resonate...and I smack into flower pictures.

On Third Ave near 12th St I got a bagel after teaching. Toasted poppy seed with garlic herb cream cheese, and a side of Black-eyed Susans.

Speaking of asides--a friend called over the weekend to say that she's buried in flowers too. Her daughters bring home flowers made of clay, paper, papier-mache, in crayon and paint, made from pipe cleaners and Popsicle sticks, and pulled from the gardens of neighbors as they walk home from school. Her first grader declared that she's opening a flower shop with a friend.

What's your flower story?

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