![](https://photoseed.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/blog-working-hydrangea.jpg)
“Still Life” 1908 by Baron Adolf De Meyer, American. (1868-1946) Hand-pulled photogravure included with Camera Work XXIV: gravure: 19.2 x 15.6 cm | mount: 19.8 x 16.2 – 29.8 x 21.0 cm (2x: Gampi and Enfield). Two hydrangea blooms rest in a glass of water. Its speculated De Meyer was looking for a diversion from photographing people, and around 1906 began a series of flower studies like this one that are remarkable for their simplicity and radical in their composition. Right: North American big-leaf hydrangea with purple blooms displayed in green-glazed tankard by Charles Grosjean, Hog Bay Pottery, Franklin, Maine. Photograph by David Spencer| PhotoSeed Archive
This summer in the New England area, where PhotoSeed calls home, has seen copious hydrangea blooms like none in recent memory. So with juxtaposition in mind, I cracked an issue of Camera Work and brought to life for a moment one of my favorite Adolf De Meyer photographs from 1908: Still Life, featuring several limp hydrangea blooms balancing from a clear glass of water. The radical composition sucks me in every time I see this photograph and was an important marker in my own development as a young photographer- that and the stunning Jan Groover (American: 1943–2012) compositions featuring household cutlery.
Perhaps inspiration itself for the much later André Kertész photograph called “Melancholic Tulip, New York”, dating to 1939, in which a drooping bloom is photographed by Kertész (American, born Hungary 1894-1985) using a parabolic mirror- a metaphor, according to the Getty “that is also a self-portrait of the artist as a wilted flower”. Perhaps. But for me, one thing is constant in Photography: changing perspectives. Assuming a human is behind that lens, (sorry AI) photography is ever changing. Just like the weather of late and climate change in particular. The result of these factors- fleeting beauty showcased in bountiful hydrangea blooms- can be distilled from a few factors. In The Times, Hank Sanders writes on July 10, 2024 and quotes Melissa Finley, Thain Curator of Woody Plants at the New York Botanical Garden, who said that after a rainy summer and fall in 2023, a warm winter with El Niño conditions “caused very little damage to the dormant buds, leading to an explosion of blossoms now.” As for myself, I’m going to enjoy the show around these parts, which includes these glorious backyard blossoms, juxtaposed. I hope you do too.