PHOTOGRAPHS > GHOSTS OF FLOWERS

Ghosts of Flowers

Do flowers feel beautiful? What’s left when flowers die?

What is the life of a flower? Do flowers feel community? Do they admire one another as we admire them? And what patterns within their dalliance do we recognize or not within ourselves? Do flowers feel beautiful by simply living as flowers? What could we do to feel beautiful?

Oliver uses color digital and black and white film photography as he meditates on the nature of the empheral life of flowers—and how we see ourselves.

In the color photographs Oliver presents images of flowers as they exist in beauty in an infinitely extended moment.

In the black and white photographs Oliver asks what’s left when flowers die? He intentionally under exposes these photographs onto Ilford HP5+ film and then develops the negatives for 1.5 times the normal development time. By underexposing the scene, the shadows fall to black isolating the green and white of the flowers though slightly subdued—as if these are photographs of ghosts of flowers.