Flowers for My Beloved

         Project “Flowers for My Beloved” reflects my attempt to revive the tradition of a family album for a couple. It aims to draw attention to the partly gone ability of photography to store memories about significant moments in the couple’s life and reveals my wish to remember happy moments which accompany the ritual of presenting flowers to a beloved woman. The instant film perfectly suits the imitation of the quick and inevitable process of flowers fading: both have no chance for a second life, but tend to stay in memory.

        The period of working on the project took about three years (2014-2016) - the time I had been living with Irina who later became my wife. I have always liked presenting her with flowers, contrary to the popular stereotype about a short life of the period of “roses and candies”. Wildflowers or garden bouquets, roses or even branches with blossoming leaves could be regularly found in our kitchen, delighting us with bright colors and pleasant smell.

      In one of the first pictures there are dried wildflowers we once collected together during a walk in a park nearby. I remember that as soon as we got home, we noticed how quickly they were crumbling and understood there was no sense leaving them on the kitchen table. But we felt even more sorry realizing that alongside with the bouquet we would part with our emotions and memories connected with it. And it was then when I decided to make a photo of my beloved with the flowers - as an instant imprint of our feelings. The ordinary kitchen wall, a bright camera flash, and after 15 seconds an image began to appear on the white surface of the instant film.

       This is how I was getting gradually involved into the project, but not even all the flowers were captured on camera - it was not an end in itself after all. My sincere joy of giving flowers to Irina miraculously got transformed and completely matched my enthusiasm in photography. On frequent business trips by car I sometimes could not but stop to pick up daisies noticed in fields or huge lupines, which then occupied half of our dining table being the brightest spot in our kitchen.

      First the pictures were simply lying in my desk and only some time later they moved into an album. Now it has a variety of colors on each spread: from classic spring tulips, a mimosa branch for the Women’s Day or a dozen of red roses to tiny cute hand-picked bouquets from local seasonal fairs. In the course of time I was growing more and more interested in moving away from the format of the simple frontal shooting and I could not resist the temptation to experiment with unusual angles. Every single image reflected my spontaneous desire to manifest my feelings, sudden impulses of love, which over time will be forgotten just as cut flowers always fade away. But being put in the sentimental photo-herbarium, they took their own place in relations chronology, capturing the transformation of ordinary romanticism and gallantry into a good old ritual of doing something pleasant to your beloved without getting tired of using imagination in trying to surprise her.

       Looking through the photographs and reading their captions cause special sensations, similar to what you feel when coming across a dried cornflower between the pages of a book you once read. This fragile souvenir from the past is capable of making you feel one more time the emotions and mood of the moment when the torn flower was still full of life.

        Every young couple who decides to move together inevitably faces the problem of getting used to each other. We really tend to adopt and thus stop noticing everything and everyone: the rhythm of life and relationships, one's own duties and partner's characteristics. Together with these processes there is a risk of losing your beloved one, as well as the very intensity of one’s feelings. Those emotions that once stimulated consciousness and forced to do crazy things, risk to fade away just like a daisy you have picked up two days before. Their place tends to be taken by dry and boring "as always," "as usual," "the way it works." The constantly replenishing herbarium of memories which now numbers almost a hundred pictures helps to realize that in the shared moments one can constantly find a source of inspiration to continue to see and appreciate the other, thus eliminating the risk of your love having "a shelf life". 

* Please see Russian description of the project on the last page of gallery.                              2014 - 2016