Petal is a series of colour photographs of greatly enlarged and highly detailed floral forms in varying stages of bud, bloom and decay. Petal represents flowers as exquisite corpses, drawing directly on the Vanitas symbolism of the seventeenth century European floral still life genre. These references are further enhanced by the fundamental connection between still photography and death, created by photography’s ability to preserve what was once animated, as fixed and frozen in time.

In attempting to evoke visual images of death through symbol and metaphor, I have become increasingly aware that, in our culture, death is a forbidden subject. Death’s double position as anomalous, marginal and repressed, and at the same time, masterful and manifest, is paramount.

Petal also explores the symbolic potential of floral imagery as fabric and flesh.  Rose and iris petals display creases and folds, gladioli and lilies drape and unfurl, and poppies are reminiscent of crushed silk.  At the same time flowers can refer to the body, to veins and pores, a fold of young skin, or the wrinkling of aging, evoking a surreal fusion between the funerary bouquet, the funeral shroud, and the corpse.