Evening Glories: Robert Turney's Moonflower Photographs

Evening Glories: Robert Turney's Moonflower Photographs Steve Rachman Robert J. Turney's moonflower studies are the photographic harvest of three years worth ofsummer evenings in East Lansing, Michigan. In the spring, Turney sowed his seeds in three large flowerpots (he is a casually accomplished gardener) and let the twining vines grow. Come July and August, the plants would blossom as the sun went down and the photographer would move his pots ofmoonflowers into his driveway, set up his lighting (two no-nonsense 500-watt quartz construction lamps), and get his Schneider 355mm f/9 G-Claron lens into position. In darkness, Turney shot them: singly, in pairs and groups, in bud stage or various phases ofblossoming , and in full, trumpeting bloom. From 1999-2001, in this seasonal way, Turney pursued the flowers, under clouds, under stars, under the glowing coal ofhis cigarette. He used all the elements oflight and dark, testing each photographic idea as it occurred to him, printing them, scrutinizing the results under the ground glass until his lens had nothing new to show him and he knew that he was done. He winnowed the results to thirteen images, six of which have been selected and reformatted for presentation here. They are not especially enlarged, Turney assures me, but it would be easy enough to mistake them for gross enlargements. Taken from eighteen inches away and printed in a generous i3"x 10" format, the blossom in, say, Moonflower #1 is larger than a splayed hand. One feels slightly miniaturized before the magnified beauty of these flowers. It is subtle because one does not readily perceive it as magnification but as clarification. Each phase ofthe opening flower appears with the insight of fresh observation. One finds here a closed umbrella, there, a soft, almost molten pinwheel ofpetals, or an origami ear trumpet. Each marbled curl and vein in the heart-shaped leaves, each papery crease of a bud, each horned serif and curlicue at the tips of the white petals is on display 25 26STEVE RACHMAN with a kind oftactile immediacy. There is a pleasing synesthesia ofvision and touch here; every texture is made visible. This is the case not only because the flowers are in bloom, but the plants are alive. In the alfresco studio ofthe driveway, the pots gave the photographer the freedom and flexibility to arrange and rearrange the living flowers —uncut and un-vased. Monet had to go into his gardens at Giverny to paint his lilies; Weston had to pick his pepper before he photographed it, but Turney's is a harvest ofunpicked blossoms. A moveable garden opens up possibilities ofballetic arrangement without destroying or delimiting the plant's existence, establishing working and living relationships among the photographer , camera, and subject. In this way the aura of the living plant is recorded and at the same time set free. Through the deep shadows and simple , strategic lighting, the photographic illusionist works his understated magic, the pale moonflowers are liberated from their root-bound condition and begin to swim, like the moon itself, in the velvet darkness. It would be easy to misconstrue Turney's moonflowers as conventionally romantic. Summer nights, flowers, moons, and beauty suggest the props of romance, but they are not seeking sentimental associations. If they are romantic at all then they refer to the romance of ordinary beauty, sensuality , and sex. The beauty one finds in the back yard, in the middle of Michigan. In Moonflower #5, an insect or moth of some kind clings to the underside ofa leaf; in another image (not shown here), a mosquito appears to be siphoning offa stamen. Small prosaic detail sits quietly hiding in plain view amid the evening luster. Romance would exaggerate the inconsistency between the sensual blossom and insect life, but nothing in these pictures calls for that, they are part of the life of the garden. "If one decides upon the medium ofphotography, why attempt to soar in the realm ofimagination ?" asked Imogen Cunningham, whose studies of magnolias from the 1920s are Turney's closest photogtaphic cousins. "There are plenty of the subtleties oflife right on earth, which need delicate interpretation." The felt need ofdelicate interpretation always urges the...