gardens as social spaces

A lit­tle while back I wrote about the Crit­i­cal Mass pho­tog­ra­phy awards. One of the “Top 50″ pho­tog­ra­phers, Lucas For­est Foglia, had a series based on a com­mu­nity gar­den and the peo­ple who inter­act there.

Left: Lukas For­est Foglia: Savuth Water­ing [ source ]

The Great Amer­i­can Gar­den shares under­tones with the Great Amer­i­can any­thing: com­pe­ti­tion, excess and indi­vid­u­al­ism. Just look at all the bat­tles for the green­est lawn that the Scott’s fer­til­izer peo­ple per­pet­u­ate in their ads that are about to start sat­u­rat­ing the airwaves.

But com­mu­nity gar­dens allow some­thing else to hap­pen. They’re shared spaces and meet­ing places where peo­ple of dif­fer­ing back­grounds and cul­tures interact.

Foglia’s pho­tos look at the var­ied peo­ple who work plots of land in a com­mu­nity gar­den in Prov­i­dence, Rhode Island, and they cel­e­brate the inter­sec­tions that develop there. It’s a nice body of work and def­i­nitely worth a look.

Lessons

Left: Lukas For­est Foglia: Lessons, 2005 [ source ]

May 18 2008 | Categories: art • gardening • photography | Tags: • • | No Comments »

garden photography: beth dow

I was look­ing at some of the work of the six final­ists who’ve been invited to sub­mit book pro­pos­als as part of the Crit­i­cal Mass pho­tog­ra­phy com­pe­ti­tion. One of them, Beth Dow, has a beau­ti­ful body of work based on for­mal gar­dens, many of them land­marks like Siss­inghurst or the grounds of Blenheim Palace.


Beth Dow: Stan­dard, Lit­tle More­ton Hall, plat­inum pal­la­dium print, 8.5x16” image, image copy­right Beth Dow [ source ]

The images acknowl­edge the geome­tries of the gar­dens, and there’s no doubt that these are human-organized land­scapes. My favorite images play with that geom­e­try, not just pre­sent­ing it, but using the four edges of the pho­to­graph to both con­tain and ani­mate the forms before the lens.

I’d sub­mit­ted some work to the com­pe­ti­tion that I did in the late 90s while I was Artist-in-Residence at Yosemite National Park. Although I wasn’t one of the book final­ists I was selected as one of the “Top 50,” with the port­fo­lio to be fea­ture online. I’ll link to it once it’s up.

April 02 2008 | Categories: gardening • landscape design • photography | Tags: • • | 1 Comment »