Perennial

A flower falls across a wall in shadow, much larger than the people standing under it. They hold each other and stay still, small beneath something that has been growing a long time.

Perennial is a series of portraits about love and the different shapes it takes. Partners. A parent and child. Friends. The love someone keeps for themselves. The love that stays after a person is gone. Each portrait holds one kind.

The flower above them is drawn. For every portrait I commission a bloom in simple line work, shaped by the story the people tell me, so the shadow that falls on them is theirs alone. A flower that comes back every spring for a love that has lasted. A bud for something just beginning. A cut stem still in bloom for a love that outlived the person.

I pose people close, holding each other: a hand in someone's hair, an arm around a waist, a cheek resting on a shoulder. The wall, the light, and the scale hold steady from one portrait to the next, so what changes is the people and the flower above them.

About This Project

Perennial started with a question about what love looks like when it isn't romantic. Most pictures of love show couples. A friendship of forty years is harder to photograph. So is the love someone still carries for a person who died. There is nothing obvious to point a camera at.

The flower solves that. I talk with each subject about the relationship before the sitting, and what they tell me becomes the brief for the drawing. A stencil artist works from it, and the finished bloom is projected over them on the day.