Gardens and other Edens

During the 1980s and ’90s, I made a series of photographs of gardens. Mostly the gardens of friends, and a few public gardens. And not photographs, but rather, photographs in series — groups of 10 or 20 meant to be seen as a single unit, much like a music suite: various movements making a single titled presentation. 

There was a moment back then when “sequences” were fashionable. Duane Michaels made a living off them. But those were meant to be read like panels of a comic strip, telling a single story. Frames from a film. 

But what I was thinking of was a series not a sequence. They were meant to be shifting moods or patterns, understood the way multi-movement music was heard. A suite of images: Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Minuet, and Gigue, for instance. And intended to be understood as a single thing rather than merely a collection. 

Whether I was successful or not, it was what I was thinking. 

I created perhaps a dozen or so of these series, each boxed up and ordered, with a title card and with individual photographs shown in an order, and all taken during a single day as a single experience. I still work that way, although less formally. I had a show at Tidewater Community College in Virginia Beach, Va., where I had taught in the mid-1980s, and included 12 of these series on the walls. There were more than a hundred prints, lined up and organized by book. 

I’ve continued to work in series, but it was gardens I focused on back then. The photos seemed personal without being intrusive. They were metaphors of their creators. I thought I might share a couple of them. 

One of the first was made on a visit to New Orleans while staying with friends and former colleagues Judy and Dave Walker. Judy had been the food editor of The Arizona Republic and Dave, aka “Cap’n Dave,” had been our TV writer. They both left Arizona to work for the Times Picayune. 

 Judy was one of the most gracious and kind people I have ever known. She was one of those people everyone felt comfortable with and at home in any social situation. It was her garden that I thought mirrored her personality. 

Here is that set, in order:

Another kind of series was of the public garden, in this case the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix. I had visited many times, walking the sunny paths through cactus, cholla, agave and boojum trees. 

One winter, my friend Alexander came to visit us in the desert and I took him to the Botanical Gardens and we walked around all day. It was his first time visiting the West and I got to see it all again for the first time through his eyes. 

I first met Sandro — for that is what we call him — my sophomore year at college. He was nuts about classical music and we spent many hours in each others’ dorm rooms spinning vinyl on our portable stereos. We became lifelong friends and spent many camping trips to the Outer Banks. And later, when I was going through a rough patch in life, Sandro and his wife, Mary Lou, took me in and gave me a place to live, fed me and took care of me. I am forever grateful to the two of them. 

They later moved to Maine and live in an old farmhouse in Sullivan and I have visited them many times, although it has gotten more difficult now that I am old, and both driving and flying have become a problem. 

Later, just before I retired, I had a show of my garden photographs at the same Desert Botanical Garden, although this time, it was individual images from the series. The bulk of the images were of Monet’s garden in Giverny, but images from the earlier books were mixed in, in a show titled “Giverny and Other Edens.”  

I now photograph my back yard and watch it through its seasons, and my own as well. 

Click on any image to enlarge