Photographer Jannelle Lynch wants us to appreciate the beauty in our everyday surroundings by looking slower and more closely. Lynch wants each of her photographs to be viewed as a world in itself, an instance captured by her camera lenses that showcases the beauty created by nature. To put it simply, she wants us to take our time to observe and pay attention to our surroundings, so that we can appreciate nature. Even a tumble of weeds has beauty if we look closer, as NPR details:
She says she often would shoot from the ground, sitting in the grass, sometimes flanked by her dogs. That gives an animal-eye view to scenes only a foot or two high. Lynch says that this perspective gave her a sense of grounding — to the earth and the plant life she was photographing.
The idea of connection is crucial for Lynch, and it helps explain her photo book's mysterious title, Another Way of Looking at Love. It comes from something she heard on the radio, an interview with the philosopher Alain de Botton; he said: "Another way of looking at love is connection." In this sense, love is not a romantic imperative, but a feeling of belonging with others and with the world.
Visual connections are also created by the many lines and geometries of branches, stalks and twigs, which come alive under Lynch's focused gaze: the way a string of tiny blooms folds back on itself to create the appearance of an eye in Seeing Anew; the way a fallen branch is held parallel to a barberry plant in Orthogonal Reality; the way entwining branches of pokeweed and goldenrod appear to create a Summer Wreath.
"I do innately find beauty in all of nature," she says. "So whether it's a weed or a dead branch, there's surely something beautiful there."
image via NPR