This is the artist statement for my Ap Photography Concentration. The Photos that correlate with this will be in the next post!
Beauty in Decay
While I was growing up, I was constantly surrounded by nature. My mother worked as a director at a large park, so I spent many of my first walking years toddling along forest paths. This early exposure gave me the appreciation for nature I have today. It also instilled in me the fact that beauty can be found anywhere. From the large to the small, from the simple to the grandiose, and even from the living and the dying. The last factor is what I have based this series on. The unappreciated facet of beauty, death and decay. Normally, people see something dead or dying and dismiss it as finality, an end to beauty. I see it as a whole new phase, a new step on the path to finding true loveliness. It was not exactly easy for me to find examples of beauty in decay, because I had to immerse myself into the series to truly see the seemingly ordinary death all around us, and gain new insight to the alluring facet of decay.
I put together these photos in a unified manner to show how decay and death in nature can be truly appreciated as beauty. All of these photos utilize a shallow depth of field, which unifies the images by creating emphasis on the certain facets. The progression reflects stages of life to death, and from death to decay. Image 1, shows how desperately life fights death, using every shred of its strength to cling to the light and escape the darkness. Image 4 reflects the inevitability of death as it sets in, vibrant life falling into the blackness. Image 7 is an indication of what happens after death, a fragile skeleton of the former life it once had. A bold line enables ones eye to travel toward the fragility of the latticework of the shell. Image 10 is a good example of the patterns found in nature that retain their beauty even after death. When one looks at these photos, I want him/her to see that all aspects of existing hold a form of beauty to them. Death is not something to be reviled, it is something to be revered as beautiful and certainly respected.
I thought I had a deep appreciation for all aspects of natural beauty before I started this series. However I have come to realize that I had barely scratched the surface. I have learned that a decaying tomato can hold as much beauty as a freshly bloomed flower when one truly learns to appreciate the world around them. I have learned that all it takes to make a dead leaf as alluring as a masterful portrait is the right angle. Most of all, I have learned that every spot of rot, every dying petal, and every drooping stem has beauty in it. If I did this series again, I would like to expand and include not just underappreciated facets of natural decay, but also decay found in other places, like man-made structures and persons. If I expanded on my current topic, I would add more and more expansions into the aspect of after death, the exploration of decay. I can never look as a dying plant the same way again after this series, and I feel quite fortunate as a result. Beauty is meant to be appreciated in all aspects, so I am merely following the that beauty through the cycle of life and death.
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