Flowers were almost the sole focus of my photographic attention
during the spring and summer
of 2003.
I was working on a video project that required images of flowers,
lots of them.
So day after day I was on the lookout for anything floral—
in public parks and neighbors’
gardens,
growing wild in fields and tamed in pots.
It was an amazing time for me.
The colors!
The yellows and oranges and purples and pinks.
But it was especially the reds that drew me.
Scarlet and maroon and crimson and cerise.
Cardinal-red, cherry-red, ruby-red.
How did all these colors ever come into being?
And why attach themselves so integrally to flowers?
Why do not flowers simply display a host of greens,
the way most leaves are decorated?
The color-filled creations in this photograph led me to ask
such questions
as I lay on my back in a public
garden in Warsaw, Indiana.
My head was pushing against the bottom of these daylilies.
My back was arched uncomfortably high as I strained to see
what happened to those vermillion
petals
as the sunlight came streaming through them.
“Amazing!” I said to myself as I lay there.
“Who could ever have
imagined ‘red’?”
