Sad Flowers
Orissa Haze / 2023
from Sad Flowers,
Lumen Print on Ilford Galerie black & white photo paper
Sad Flowers is an ongoing series that examines the human minds powerful ability to associate and relate to an image in a way that is subjective to our personal conditioning (nature/nurture). It is the accessibility of plants and flowers, their natural cycle, and ephemerality that the artist is drawn to. Kazannik embraces their seasonal qualities, experimenting with a diverse array of flora, depending on the places he visits throughout the year. Regardless of where he finds his natural material, they follow the same law: they bud, blossom, and die.
Sad Flowers takes much of its inspiration from Chinese watercolour paintings, Buddhist texts and wabi-sabi aesthetics. Kazannik aims to convey the fragility and fleeting beauty of life, while also celebrating its infinite potential for transformation and growth, similar to Buddhist teachings on the impermanent nature of our existence. In Sad Flowers, each image captures a moment in time, imbued with its own unique energy and symbolic meaning.
Kazannik embraces an image-making process where objects are laid on photo-sensitive material, using re-appropriated paper, and subsequently layered through the technique of multiple exposures. By incorporating chemicals such as cyanotype developers, the formation of the work is experimental and relies on chance. This is exaggerated through his choice of natural light sources paired with unnatural light sources such as tungsten light, UV light, and laser pointer. Kazannik has adopted a unique technique with his image-making in Sad Flowers whereby each piece continues to develop post-dark room exposure, meaning no image is .. fixed
