In my garden
31 July 2024
31 July 2024
I was working on a text for the forthcoming exhibition Garden
Futures, and before I knew it, I found myself browsing The Photographer in the
Garden.
I took photos of the institute’s outdoor space in 2015, when the first edition of The New Garden was being laid out. They are not very good, basically because I was trying to make pictures that would work as pairs, and they didn’t. Or perhaps some did, but as a concept, it tanked. Since then I have photographed the garden many times. I’m still fond of the one I took in 2021, shortly before it was razed to the ground to make way for the reconstruction of the Museumpark. The new New Garden isn’t half as nice, and I have only photographed it upon request since then. Except for the ones below.
I like photographing gardens, but I have little interest in individual plants or flowers as a subject. I tend to look at gardens as landscape, or architecture. The photos on this page are a little ‘closer’ than that though. Here is a Belgian film I saw a couple of weeks ago. Not about gardens, but about looking, and paying attention. To mosses, made up of thousands of little plants and flowers, but also to long walks across the city of Brussels, its green outskirts, the warm summer night glow, overgrown fences and the slow movement of cranes against a dusky sky. I suspect some of this resonates in these pictures.
I took photos of the institute’s outdoor space in 2015, when the first edition of The New Garden was being laid out. They are not very good, basically because I was trying to make pictures that would work as pairs, and they didn’t. Or perhaps some did, but as a concept, it tanked. Since then I have photographed the garden many times. I’m still fond of the one I took in 2021, shortly before it was razed to the ground to make way for the reconstruction of the Museumpark. The new New Garden isn’t half as nice, and I have only photographed it upon request since then. Except for the ones below.
I like photographing gardens, but I have little interest in individual plants or flowers as a subject. I tend to look at gardens as landscape, or architecture. The photos on this page are a little ‘closer’ than that though. Here is a Belgian film I saw a couple of weeks ago. Not about gardens, but about looking, and paying attention. To mosses, made up of thousands of little plants and flowers, but also to long walks across the city of Brussels, its green outskirts, the warm summer night glow, overgrown fences and the slow movement of cranes against a dusky sky. I suspect some of this resonates in these pictures.
Back to my text.
One of the gardens featured in the exhibition is the one Derek Jarman created at Dungeness on the barren coast of Kent. I look up its exact location on Street View and wander around for a while. I remember the film, The Garden, and find its soundtrack by Simon Fisher Turner on Spotify. The soundscapes (not sure if I should call it music) take me right back to the nineties.
Seeing Jubilee in a movie theater in London, the building a former railway station or church, I’m not sure. Driving to Poland in a dodgy car. We borrowed an apartment that I would have loved to photograph now, but my interests were elsewhere at the time. I remember playing The Garden and other art films on VHS tapes and taking stills. Slides, that are probably stored not far from where my feet are. I resist the urge to crawl under my desk.
One of the gardens featured in the exhibition is the one Derek Jarman created at Dungeness on the barren coast of Kent. I look up its exact location on Street View and wander around for a while. I remember the film, The Garden, and find its soundtrack by Simon Fisher Turner on Spotify. The soundscapes (not sure if I should call it music) take me right back to the nineties.
Seeing Jubilee in a movie theater in London, the building a former railway station or church, I’m not sure. Driving to Poland in a dodgy car. We borrowed an apartment that I would have loved to photograph now, but my interests were elsewhere at the time. I remember playing The Garden and other art films on VHS tapes and taking stills. Slides, that are probably stored not far from where my feet are. I resist the urge to crawl under my desk.