ART & PHOTOGRAPHY
Tess was the featured artist in Sad Girl Review, an arts magazine in British Columbia. She submitted the following photos as a collection called “The Flower Collector”.
IN HER OWN WORDS:
“The Flower Collector contrasts the ephemeral nature of flowers and the natural world with the permanence of documentation via photography.”
VISUAL ANALYSIS OF THE FLOWER COLLECTOR
An essay by Amber Morrison Fox
Editorial Note: Tess submitted her images with a brief description to Sad Girl Review on November 19, 2019. Her life ended on December 11 of 2019, but her email was not discovered until late July 2020. I deeply regret that I did not get the opportunity to ask her any questions about her work, and because of this I do not want to project any assumptions onto her images. I will simply share what I know and elaborate on what I see in her series.
In looking at Tess’s pictures I asked myself: What can be understood from only five images?
Tess’s submission email mentioned that she took this series of photographs between April 2018 and April 2019. The Flower Collector was received in the following order and the individual photos were untitled. I decided to visually examine Tess's work in an attempt to come to a better understanding as to why she sent it, though as expected, more questions than answers developed. While we may not be able to fully comprehend what The Flower Collector meant to Tess beyond her artist statement, we can look closely at what she provided and wonder what it might mean for us as viewers. It is fascinating to sit with and analyze an artist's work, to see the visual language they are drawn to and how they use it to express themselves. I speculated about where Tess stood in relation to her subjects and questioned why she cropped images the way she did. Did she opt to apply any editing techniques or did she pull pictures right off of her camera? I thought of her focusing her lens as she placed little purple flowers in some shots and posed her friends with them in others. She coherently presents a theme and approach; she was drawn to the hallmarks of spring and she offered them to us for our consideration.
A Common Eastern Bumble Bee collects nectar from a flowering tree. The small insect is in the center of the composition and it dangles upside down on a branch as it gathers pollen. There are clusters of white flowers around each green leaf but the image overall is dark and out of focus. How close did she get to the bee? Did she happen to see it as it rested for the evening? Tess’s statement mentions her interest in the natural world and its impermanence and there’s no better symbol of this idea than the bumble bee. Bumble bees only live for a season but they are integral to us and our world, especially to flowers.
A detail of a cement sculpture, a headstone? The sculpture is close to the camera and its head and feet are beyond the edge of the frame. Its hands hover around a bunch of tiny purple flowers and the surrounding cement is faintly streaked green. The flowers and grass are contrasted by the weathered sculpture. Stone and stems are both natural objects, as are the rare earth minerals that power Tess’s camera. Different scales of time are well represented here.
A pair of hands in the top right corner of the frame, wrists upturned. The subject, out of frame, holds their hands over a carpet of purple flowers and interlocks a few fingers. Their fingernails were painted red sometime ago and now the polish is chipped and worn away with use. The paint on each nail has naturally developed scalloped contours, not unlike the edges of the petals below.
Two purple flowers tucked into the top two button holes of someone’s shirt. Most of the image is occupied by the pale blue fabric of the shirt, with the flowers and buttons as the only details in focus. Tall trees blur in the sliver of background over the figure’s shoulder. The image refers to a person by only showing a small aspect of them; a shoulder and part of the chest at collar bone level. There is a shadow of a chin. As in the other photos, we’re denied access to more information through careful cropping. Tess is asking us to remain focused on the flowers, but the other details in her composition are intriguing too. Who put those flowers there and why?
Daffodils bloom in abundance and a black cat hides in the tall stems. The cat’s green eyes blend into its environment and its black fur convincingly mimics the shadows in between the plants. Tess notices the cat as it notices her.































































Oil Painting/Hannah Bashkow
Oil Painting/Hannah Bashkow
Watercolor/Jan Keeling