Weekend Portfolio: Cynthia Dickinson

Here and Beyond

 I’m finding, sometimes, my best work derives its source in frustration.  And these images are the result of a year’s worth of struggle with the questions “what are these images saying”; “what have images of flowers said historically and currently”; and “what do I want to say?”. I knew I didn’t want to repeat historical art. I knew I didn’t want to focus on current floral art. I struggled to find my own voice.

Daily. 

About six months into that struggle I opened a file I have called “ideas” where I save images of other photographers and artists I love. Everything from Burtynsky to Stieglitz to O’Keefe and Clemente are found in that file. The first file I happened to open was “Hiro” where I saved a number of images from his “Fighting Fish Fighting Birds” and as I looked I wondered if I could shake out a personality of an Iris as he did with those beta fish. I traveled again to photograph the Iris Garden at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum – in broad daylight with no backdrops and no reflector screens. Then I went home to see if I could look at flowers as people. As personalities with something to say. Days later an Iris took shape as “Merciful Laughter Intervened”. And now, months later, a few handfuls of images in a series that is still untitled, have taken shape from a simple question I asked myself “can I get an Iris to look like one of Hiro’s fighting fish.

Click here to see more Cynthia’s work.