Figure 1 – The flowers Persephone left behind. Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge, Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2017.

The other side to winter is, of course, the intimate landscape – the little details that, in and of themselves, are sufficient to convey the mood and sense. Here I was taken by a bit of photominimalism also a tone-on-tone. There were some twigs and little desiccated white flowers set against the snow. As in all such subjects the positioning, the composing, is everything.

Flowers speak of opulent spring and summer, snow of barren winter. This is the fundamental contrast. We spoke last week about the myth of Persephone – Persephone picking poppies. Poppies themselves suggest a dream. And here we have her story again. I remember the first time that my father told me this story. I think that we were in the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, and it has always stuck with me. In a very real way this story defines the sensibility of a temperate climate. Winter can be very harsh, but here we have just a hint, a reminder, of what the resurrection of the goddess of spring will bring with her.

This is is also why poetry goes so well with photography. We are enlightened by both, and the spiritual symbolism of the most simple subject is more clearly defined. This spirituality is based in our collective and integral myth. We need it to define ourselves.

“Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have a form.”