“There is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place where colors are brighter, the air softer, and the morning more fragrant than ever again. And in later years a familiar scent brings it to mind.”
From a set of unprocessed March daffodil photos, I picked out a few that were backlit (or side-lit), posed and processed as I described last fall in Autumn Leaves / Autumn Light, the last five re-processed on black backgrounds. A little alien in a helmet swooped in and attached itself to the daffodil in the first two photos while I was shooting; aliens, apparently, like to hug daffodils. Who knew??
“Being a spectator of calamities taking place in another country is a quintessential modern experience…. Wars are now also living room sights and sounds….
“Awareness of the suffering that accumulates in a select number of wars happening elsewhere is something constructed. Principally in the form that is registered by cameras, it flares up, is shared by many people, and fades from view. In contrast to a written account — which, depending on its complexity of thought, reference, and vocabulary, is pitched at a larger or smaller readership — a photograph has only one language and is destined potentially for all.
“Nonstop imagery (television, streaming video, movies) is our surround, but when it comes to remembering, the photograph has the deeper bite. Memory freeze-frames; its basic unit is the single image. In an era of information overload, the photograph provides a quick way of apprehending something and a compact form for memorizing it. The photograph is like a quotation, or a maxim or proverb. Each of us mentally stocks hundreds of photographs, subject to instant recall.
“Something becomes real… by being photographed. But a catastrophe that is experienced will often seem eerily like its representation.“
“To designate a hell is not to tell us anything about how to extract people from that hell, how to moderate hell’s flames. Still, it seems a good in itself to acknowledge, to have enlarged, one’s sense of how much suffering caused by human wickedness there is in the world we share with others….
“Let the atrocious images haunt us. Even if they are only tokens, and cannot possibly encompass most of the reality to which they refer, they still perform a vital function. The images say: This is what human beings are capable of doing — may volunteer to do, enthusiastically, self-righteously. Don’t forget.“
“A civilized person is one who is able, at all times and in all places, to recognize the humanity of others fully. So two stages have to be crossed before anyone can become civilized: in the first stage, you discover that others live in a way different from you; in the second, you agree to see them as bearers of the same humanity as yourself. The moral demand comes with an intellectual dimension: getting those with whom you live to understand a foreign identity, whether individual or collective, is an act of civilization, since in this way you are enlarging the circle of humanity.
“Thinking that yours is the only properly human group, refusing to acknowledge anything outside your own existence, offering nothing to others, and deliberately remaining shut away within your original milieu is a sign of barbarism; recognizing the plurality of groups, of human societies and cultures, and putting yourself on an equal footing with others is part of civilization….
“Torture, humiliation and suffering inflicted on others are marks of barbarity. The same is true of murder, and even more of collective murder or genocide, whatever may be the criterion by which you define the group that you desire to eliminate: `race’ (or visible physical characteristics), ethnic group, religion, social class or political convictions. Genocides were not a twentieth-century invention, but it cannot be denied that they lasted throughout the century — witness the massacres of the Armenians in Turkey, the `kulaks’ and the `bourgeois’ in Soviet Russia, the Jews and Gypsies in Nazi Germany, the inhabitants of the towns and cities in Cambodia, and the Tutsis in Rwanda….
‘Waging war is more barbaric than settling conflicts by negotiation….”
The world is changing before our very eyes.
That might have been a statement I could have made about the season — the first weeks of spring with green starting to bust out all around me — but since my last post (over a month ago, which I find hard to believe until I look at a calendar) the future histories of nations are being rewritten. And the first drafts of that rewrite are playing out on our media day and night, the seeds of geopolitical realignments that will change global politics, economics, and possibly even country borders before the war in Ukraine comes to an end.
It’s weirdly interesting to me that we often call our engagement with media consumption — “consumption” having archaically described “wasting diseases” like tuberculosis — yet that’s certainly one of the things that’s happening as endless videos and photographs of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine fill our television screens and social networking feeds, as they have done for weeks. There’s a relentlessness to it that’s very nearly debilitating even when experienced as a remotely observed event, so that’s possibly why I found myself back in Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others, rereading it for the logic it attempts to provide around our interactions with conflict imagery. It’s impossible to capture the nuances from the book in a few quotes or a blog post, so I selected segments above from the beginning — which describes our positions as war spectators — and from the ending, which explains why all these images matter, and why we cannot look away.
Regarding the Pain of Others was published in 2003, and so doesn’t necessarily encapsulate the shocking immediacy of what we’re seeing from embattled Ukrainian cities, photographs and videos produced nearly as quickly as events are occurring and widely disseminated within minutes of (or even during) each occurrence. “Nonstop imagery” — as Sontag described it back then — is an even more apparent element of technological acceleration than it was when she wrote the book, which makes the book as relevant now as it was then, perhaps even moreso. We may feel like we’re experiencing the war as it’s occurring — and in media, we are — yet we’re actually only experiencing a representation of that war, because unless we’re there, that’s all we’ve got. It’s our own sense of empathy that fills in the gap between the imagery and the experience — when we recognize that others, as Todorov says, are “bearers of the same humanity” as ourselves, tinged, perhaps, with a bit of suppressed relief that “there but for the grace of god, go I.”
I’ve seen some articles on the internet that describe Russia’s attack on Ukraine as “the first social media war” — and while it’s not accurate to call it the first one, changes in technology (especially cell phones and their cameras, along with the explosive growth of social networks) have certainly infused this one with a visceral level of immediacy unlike conflict representations that any of us might have seen previously. Where words — especially superlatives — seem to fail, the photographs and videos coming out of Ukraine act as stand-ins for the words and for being there, except that being there means you can’t turn it off. Perhaps, like me, you’ve realized that you never really understood the obscene destructive power of weapons of war, of missiles flung across borders at a residential apartment buildings — until now.
It’s unnerving to realize that human beings are capable of such violence. It’s disturbing even as we’re surrounded by it, pummeled with its representations, or even when we’re just dimly aware of it. It’s almost inconceivable that these same creatures are capable creating anything worthwhile, and yet they are, and they do, as they have for millennia. I’m not sure why I always think about this (meaning, I’ve gotten used to it and have never tried to figure it out), but I always find myself simultaneously saddened and enraged not only by war’s loss of life but at the creative human potential that is destroyed by other humans. While I don’t expect it to make sense, I naively want it… to make sense….
Last week, Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy appeared in a speech to the U.S. Congress, in which he included a video of Ukrainian cities that started out like a travelogue then shifted to images of the damage being done to those same cities. As he did with a previous speech to the Canadian Parliament, Zelenskyy used words (and images) as a way to urge empathy: Imagine, if you will, that this is happening to you.
The full U.S. Congress speech is here; you can skip to the portion I’m referring to by clicking here. It is difficult to watch, but should be watched, and must be witnessed.
Setting the context and content aside for a moment (I know that’s not really possible), the video is powerful in its message, even moreso because of its juxtaposition of before-and-after scenes that drive its point home… accompanied by an intensely emotional melody that I had never heard before. It evoked some memories of music I was familiar with, possibly a somber Vivaldi larghetto (like this, for example), or maybe something dark from Rachmaninoff, or maybe the theme music from the movie Schindler’s List. It took me a few days to track it down, but the music in the video was written by Ukrainian composer Myroslav Skoryk, and the piece is simply and delightfully called… Melody.
There are quite a few performances of Melody on Youtube (see also here and here); but this is the one I liked the most, by Ukrainian violinist Anastasiya Petryshak:
It goes without saying, I suppose: but may the sounds of Ukrainian violins smother the haunting screams of air-raid sirens, as soon as is humanly possible.
“The Victorian passion for botany is legendary. Daring chaps dashed around the globe and new species poured into gardens to the delight and amazement of all who beheld them.
“But gather plants together and, sooner or later, hybrids will emerge; sometimes naturally but often as a result of an irrepressible human desire to improve on nature. While fabulous, lilies had gained a reputation for being challenging and capricious to cultivate. They were exciting; they were expensive; and they were quite likely to die on you after a couple of years. Inevitably, they attracted a certain type of well-heeled horticultural brinksmanship, right up until amenable Lilium regale emerged, bringing down both prices and the level of skill required to cultivate this most desirable of flowers.”
Below is the last batch of photos of my Tiny Epic Asiatic Lily, a few more black-background renderings. The previous posts are:
With spring winding down, the summer varieties are starting to appear — and I’ve made several trips to Oakland Cemetery’s gardens to hunt down and capture some of the rather astonishing varieties that grow well there in large, cultivated spaces (as opposed to pots in my back yard). With a tropical rainstorms hitting my area over the next few days, I’ll be sticking pretty close to home, so will be sorting and processing white ones, yellow ones, red ones, orange ones, and blends of pink and red lilies that (I think) are new to the garden — or at least new to me. Stay tuned…
“The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were the golden age of plant collectors: David Douglas who brought the Douglas fir, the Monterey pine and many other conifers to England; John Jeffrey who followed Douglas to the American West; E. H. [Ernest Henry] Wilson who gave us the Chinese dogwood, the Regale lily and the dazzling Davidia or dove tree that in bloom seems to be aflutter with white birds; Reginald Farrer, George Forrest and dozens of others who changed the face of our gardens….
“Plant collecting was a dangerous business then. Douglas was torn to pieces by a wild bull in Hawaii; Farrar met his end in Upper Burma; Jeffrey vanished into the California gold rush; Forrest died of heart failure on his seventh expedition to Yunnan. And since that time the floral storehouses of western Asia have become if anything more difficult to penetrate….
“We hear no more of famous botanist-explorers or newly discovered specimens for the garden. Today it is the hybridizers who revolutionize our plantings, and of these none has wrought more changes than the American lily breeders in the last thirty years. We can now be said to dominate this field, though the lilies themselves have come from every part of the earth.”
“Ernest Wilson, called ‘Chinese Wilson’ because he explored so extensively in China, just escaped sacrificing his life to lilies. He went twice to China, the second time in 1910, to collect the regal lily. He had gathered an enormous load of lily bulbs and was on his way home with them when his mule train was caught by an avalanche. He jumped out of his sedan chair just before it was hurled down a precipice. His leg was shattered by a falling rock. There was a mule train coming the other way, and the only way it could pass without, perhaps, causing another avalanche was for Wilson to lie on his back while more than forty mules stepped over him. He reached safety but was left with what he called a ‘lily limp.'”
I don’t normally repeat quotations from one blog post to another (in fact, it’s a “thing” for me to double-check my blog to be sure I’m not repeating quotes) — but I did this time because of the references to Ernest Wilson, a British explorer and plant collector active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first quote expresses the risks such explorers took as they scoured the world botanically; the second describes in more detail an occasion where one of them almost lost their lives in search of flowering plants.
I honestly never knew such things had occurred; it’s becoming a fun learning experience for me to begin seeing the historical through-line represented by the lives of botanists and naturalists. What I began by simply looking for neat quotations about the flowers I was photographing seems to be morphing into a new (for me!) view into history from an unfamiliar (and unexpected) perspective. I always start a new post by looking for quotations, and now end out digging a little into the lives and times of people I come across, gathering bits of new information in the way I like to learn — a rather messy accumulation that I don’t worry too much about sorting out but just pile on instead.
From a Western or European perspective, the period (roughly) from 1800 through the early 1900s represent the culmination of the “Age of Exploration” — which also coincided with expanding European empire, the rise of the United States as a world-influencing power, the explosion of technological and scientific inventions, and the gradual (though debatable) increase in leisure time. Botany, as a science, has undoubtedly ancient roots; but it coalesced and connected to consumer culture and leisure time during the 1800s as more people became capable of outfitting their homes and gardens with new, and even exotic, plant species discovered by the plant explorers or developed by horticulturists. You may have never thought about it this way, but the fact that you (if you’re a gardener, or even if you’re not) can acquire plants in handy packaging to populate your garden or feature in a kitchen window has a direct historical connection to the plant explorers of the past.
Or, in other words, your trips to a nursery or Home Depot to buy plants and gardening supplies are actually a late-Victorian era invention. Isn’t that something?
With a thankful nod to Ernest Wilson: The photos below are a second batch of Tiny Epic Asiatic Lilies from my garden (the first photos are here: Epic Lilies (1 of 3)), rendered with black backgrounds rather than bricks from my courtyard.
“The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were the golden age of plant collectors: David Douglas who brought the Douglas fir, the Monterey pine and many other conifers to England; John Jeffrey who followed Douglas to the American West; E. H. [Ernest Henry] Wilson who gave us the Chinese dogwood, the Regale lily and the dazzling Davidia or dove tree that in bloom seems to be aflutter with white birds; Reginald Farrer, George Forrest and dozens of others who changed the face of our gardens….
“Plant collecting was a dangerous business then. Douglas was torn to pieces by a wild bull in Hawaii; Farrar met his end in Upper Burma; Jeffrey vanished into the California gold rush; Forrest died of heart failure on his seventh expedition to Yunnan. And since that time the floral storehouses of western Asia have become if anything more difficult to penetrate….
“We hear no more of famous botanist-explorers or newly discovered specimens for the garden. Today it is the hybridizers who revolutionize our plantings, and of these none has wrought more changes than the American lily breeders in the last thirty years. We can now be said to dominate this field, though the lilies themselves have come from every part of the earth.”
Last year the pandemic shut everything down right about the time those of us with gardens in the Southeast would have just started hauling our donkeys to garden centers, stocking up on plants and flowers, dragging home bags of garden soil and pine bark … to begin the spring planting. With so many uncertainties and so much conflicting information flying around, I decided during the first shutdown to stay away from stores as much as possible — and so acquired nothing new for my garden, simply maintaining it and rearranging plants I already had.
But this year: a different story. On the day I hit two weeks after my second COVID-19 vaccine dose, I bought my first batch of new flowering plants in two spring seasons, including the delightful lilies featured in the galleries below (and in the next two posts). On that first and subsequent trips, I also acquired some new begonias, a hydrangea for a large pot, a hibiscus with orange flowers, four canna lilies (two of which joined the goldfish in my pond), bee balm, balloon flowers, and a couple of hostas. Most of them posed for photoshoots while still flowering (and the cannas are just starting to flower now), so will make appearances here over the next few weeks.
This plant is a Tiny Epic Asiatic Lily — whose flowers are a mix of yellow and orange in various saturations, with the centers of each bloom liberally sprinkled with cinnamon colors. The name cracked me up — I mean, isn’t “Tiny Epic” almost like describing something as “Small Big”? — but I think it’s named that way to differentiate this and other Asiatics from larger variants like the Regale lily mentioned in the quote above, or those lilies with big, trumpet-shaped flowers like those I photographed last year at Oakland Cemetery’s gardens (see Summer 2020: Lily Variations (7 of 10)).
