| The spark for Casey Moore’s ongoing photographic series But For the Wisdom started in 2018, when he happened upon a verge on the side of a road overflowing with wild flowers. A few days later he went back and shot his first meadow. It wasn’t obvious at the time as to why he shot this as a double exposure, but in hindsight it became clear that this was the way to capture the riot of life and beauty he found in that meadow. Two years later, Moore deliberately set out to create a rush of images in the series which now amounts to about 20 compositions. But For the Wisdom fully immerses the viewer in an abundance of impossible detail. The freedom in the process - Moore doesn’t see the final image until he has developed it in the darkroom - comes across in the final shot. The two compositions overlap and layer, reverberating an energy that is particular only to nature. They, quite literally, teem with life. |
From Blossoms
From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches
From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.
O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.
There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
- Li Young Lee