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Colazione sull’Erba is a subtle, geometric poem on the relationship between man and nature. It is a matter of reciprocal influences, relationships, symbioses and battles. Here man appears as a product of nature, upon which his very survival depends, while nature is symmetrically a product of man, who shapes it in his own image and likeness. The woman in Annihilation, immobilized (as in a photograph) by roots and transformed into an Arcimboldoesque figure, corresponds to the dozens of compositions of flowers and plants amassed by Ghirri in his series. Whether they are eccentrically pruned and meticulously aligned trees, gardens, flowerbeds or windowsills adorned with potted plants, these genuine botanical installations represent the reflection of their creator or owner. They are portraits that express the personality, tastes and fears of those who designed them.
One of the most obvious distinguishing features of this career narrative is Winship’s consistent preference for working in black and white. On one level this has simply been a matter of taste; a link back, perhaps, to the ‘restrained beauty’ of that near-monochrome Humber landscape. But it has not been a purely aesthetic choice. By using black and white she has been able to consciously abstract reality, ensuring her photography’s detachment from the random atmospheric distractions that colour can bring to the rendering of time and place, and so allowing for a more fluid exchange between past and present.
On a cold, bright day at the end of January 2020, I sat with Paul Graham in Manhattan, photo books spread over a tabletop, looking through the images you see here now by photographers and filmmakers whose work I had come to know within the past couple of years, some within the past several decades. As the pages turned, as books opened and piled up and were rearranged next to each other, subtle connections began to reveal themselves like reshuffled cards.
In my bedroom on the second floor of a two-story house, lost in a sprawl of tract housing overlooking a cul-de-sac in Huntington Beach, California, I had a wall that was collaged all over with cut-outs from fashion magazines, a sort of shrine to supermodels. Paulina, Cindy, Christy and Helena would gaze upon me as I stared at myself in the mirror, wondering when my boobs and legs would start growing, when my skin would clear up and when would I start to look like them. I was coming to the realization that it wasn’t going to happen for me, and I started to resent my reality. I felt ugly.
Love You Long Time.
Collier Schorr
Quickly.
That’s what she told me.
Deadline?
No she said...no deadline.
Many of the pictures in this volume are already in the children’s family albums. To the children and their families over the years they will summon up associations, details and stories—a continuously self-revising stream of captions. We can only read the laconic literal titles here—“My daddy feeding the cows,” “My foster family on Turkey Creek,” “My mother feeding the cat,” “My sister’s baby’s funeral,” “Mamaw and the baby”—repeat the words, and point to the beauties of the photographs. But in many cases, if we take the captions away we are speechless, as if in the presence of a mystery.