“I am dreaming of the trees that devote themselves to an unending search for aerial balance … Such is the life of a fig tree, like a poet’s: the search for light and the difficulty of remaining in it. There are apple trees that prefer the beauty of their fruit to the maintenance of their balance and so they break. They are mad.” – Francis Jammes, “Pensées des Jardins”

B U L B is a photographic series that was in response to a call for work by the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art that explores the otherworldly entanglements with vegetal life, and the endless potential for imagination that is found in the darkness of the underbrush and lightness of the overstory.

As a reaction to this call, I created a photographic series that explores the intersection of our basic needs of food and language with that of photography. The photographs, while seemingly balanced and organized is juxtaposed with the reality of the photographed subjects, a commentary on the complex nature of mass produced food that is often sold as being wholesome with the use of misleading text and glamorized photographs.

The word B U L B that is shown in the piece is a reference to bulbs of garlic as well as the shutter speed that was used to photograph these images.

The installation is meant to invoke our sense of sight as well as smell, as the lightbulbs on the floor are placed on or next to the garlic, which slowly emits the smell of garlic.