Morbid magic flowering in the dark

Life and death issues: The Rose Gardens
5 April 2012

This enchanting show opens surprisingly, onto a large photograph of a seductive, red silk-covered couch. Shot face-on, it lacks all perspective and resembles a painting, but the ruffled silk suggests the unsettled subject suggested in the title, Analyst (Couch) (1).

The viewer then enters a white room hung with five large photographs of rose bushes, like windows opening on to a garden. With their branches and flowers set against intense, uniformly matt black backgrounds, they recall paintings from the medieval Dutch school.

Sarah Jones shot in London's parks by night, using a vintage plate camera to guarantee such clarity and dense blackness. She banishes shadows, scale and context, to exaggerate the drama of the flowers' life and death.

Her rising reputation is based on portraits of young girls - sullen, uncertain and often looking away from the camera. She treats the roses similarly, taking them clear of garden magazine imagery by photographing from the dark side, away from the sun.

Instead of advertising perfection and only glossy leaves, we see pale undersides, prominent veins and brown blight spots which suggest ageing human hands.

She glories in such allusions to death. She captures flowers at all stages on one branch - papery petals clinging to a swelling hip, or curling and newly brown, perfect pinky-orange blossoms in their prime, and a starkly erect bud, turgid with life. But as the light fades in Wild Rose: Blue Flower (1) only the thorns in a tangle of dead briars, are highlighted.

Emerging past Analyst (Couch), the rumpled silk now suggests a symbolic dreamworld. But even without such interpretations, Jones's latest work is expanding the vocabulary of flower photography - and creating morbid magic.

Sarah Jones
Maureen Paley
Herald Street, E2 6JT

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in