I spotted this poignant scene yesterday afternoon, in a churchyard; yes, that’s a war memorial in the background. Artificial flowers in vases nearby looked cheap and tawdry in comparison. These real flowers, together with seed-heads, were themselves a reminder that memory is organic; poppies die, but more will come again. Those who died in battle will not be forgotten.
This is one of my recent experiments with ‘negative space’ – that is, allowing a small but important detail in a photo to be set against a large plain (or consistent) background, so as to make a statement. Here, the statement is about late summer; just a handful of poppies in a wheat field about to be harvested. One without the other would not have conveyed the message.
