Honest and Vulnerable
We love flowers so much we kill them.
—Hannah Kozak
As I continue to work my way through this project, a gathering of floral portraits, I read and study from different perspectives. I enjoyed a video from FRAMES today; Tomasz Trzebiatowski shares his conversation with photographer Hannah Kozak. Her work is deeply moving. I could relate to parts of her story as she told of how she visited her mother in a nursing home, witnessing her life ebb. Photography was integral in the process of healing her relationship with her mother.
I was bringing my mother flowers every time I went to visit her. And then a few days later, the flowers would start to die, right? And I couldn't bear to just throw them out. So, I would take the flowers from the nursing home and bring them home. I set them up in a vase in the same room.
Hannah made photographs of those flowers from her mother’s room, using Kodak Portra 400 film and her Rolleiflex camera. She printed the pictures as 10x10 squares, intimate and vulnerable, in her project, We Love Flowers So Much We Kill Them.
It’s not easy to be honest and vulnerable. And it’s even harder to find a safe space to share those feelings. When words fail me, I make pictures and hope the viewer can feel my love. It’s hard to love something or someone if you are judging it . . . and this is what I try to do in this space . . . let go of judgment.