The first assignment we were given in photo class back from winter break was simply a prompt- "Pleasure and/or Pain". This is how the rest of the semester would go, being given nothing but a few words to go off of. I found this overwhelming at first. I would eventually come around to this idea and really enjoy creating an idea from so little. But for now, I was stuck running in circles in my head- mostly because I had committed to almost exclusively shoot still lives this semester. Pleasure and pain? How do I turn that into a still life?
Irises are cheaper than you would imagine as far as flowers go, are fairly hearty in a vase, and of course are gorgeous, so I always seem to have some around in middle-late winter. In my mind at least, flowers clearly express pleasure. Being given as gifts to loved ones for thousands of years ingrained this idea into all of us, but personally they hold great significance as well. What was at first just an ordinary summer job at a florist's put me face-to-face with a passion for floral design I never really realized I had before. The joy I felt when working with flowers was something I hadn't felt in a very long time, possibly ever. That joy pushed me forward during a time where I felt I had no other reason to keep going, not something even photography could do. I've said many times it's a shame something so cliche as flowers is what did that for me, but in this case, flowers being representative of the truest pleasure works out in my favor. My next step was to figure out how to twist the imagery of a flower into something painful. I do think a knife is a little on-the-nose, but I couldn't help but admire the angular sharpness of an object like that next to an iris specifically, which has thin, sharp angles for a flower. And I thought if I was leaning into drama, there's no reason to not have some extra fun and add "blood", which in this case is wine, which maybe could be argued to be a great stand-in for a flower's blood beyond the visual element.
I did end up really happy with what I got. the dramatic lighting is really fun to work with, and the slight blur on the knife is a point of pride for sure.
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I did have more than just irises this week though. While I still had the backdrop up, mostly because taking it down and putting it back up again is a great puzzle in my tiny apartment, I thought about anything else I could do in case I felt like I needed more. Since this image ended up leaning more heavily into the "pain" side of the assignment, I thought about something in the opposite direction. I couldn't shake this image in my mind of flowers coming out of a person's chest I had when the assignment was first explained to us. I wasn't sure I could effectively pull it off in my little apartment, with only one continuous light, with no models or even a friend as an acting assistant. On the other hand, I think that a photograph like that would only be at its most meaningful as a self portrait, for all I've explained here. I thought I would give it a go anyways. I already had the assignment complete, so I didn't need to worry about it not working out and having wasted my very limited time.
I did like what I got overall, but I still fussed over the image in Lightroom for hours and asked my friends if I should actually put it up during critique so many times before the assignment was due I think they were tired of me. They all said the same thing though- they thought it turned out great. I ended up not putting it on the wall, but looking back, I don't think it was because I didn't like it; I think it actually became such a personal image representing my relationship with flowers in such a special way to me, I didn't want everyone to see it in a critical setting. Throughout the semester I kept looking back on it, its grown on me quite a lot. I'm really glad I went through with it on a whim- and a little sad I didn't have it beside the still life on the critique wall, because I think these two images tell such a great story side-by-side.
swerdlin.photo 