fotoii

What we plant for pleasure or give to each other as a token takes on a secondary role, and in this way flowers have faded from our careful viewing. They have become decoration merely, symbols, carried far from their inherent beauty to represent something else. But here Charles Grogg’s images re-place those sometimes gentle, sometimes bizarre, always intriguing forms: not in the garden where they come from but in new physical states that invite new states of our awareness. In these beautiful images lay a potent strangeness, an invitation to remember history, what must have urged past civilizations to base a pharmacology on them. They attest to the fact that what we remembered so well, we forgot, the urgency of a call to attention, to action, to recognition. There is an austere energy in Peony #1, the light seeming to come from everywhere, the petals gleaming. In Passion Flower #2, the elegant design of the image underscores the plant’s intricate appeal, its array of offerings. And Lisianthus #7 seems to slip in and out of obscurity as it does in and out of focus. Charles’ attention to the presentation of these carefully handmade images brings his vision of historical beauty back to us. Beauty we had thought was simple is in fact complex, loaded with our projections about what should be. Our conceptions of beauty are never innocent, and these powerful images serve to remind us.