Made in his London studio shortly before the COVID-19 closure, Learoyd's 2020 flower series comprises images of withering blooms that become visual meditations on the human condition. Using a custom-built, room-sized camera obscura that exposes photographic paper directly to light, Learoyd photographs the same arrangement of flowers, positioned on a strong, beautiful piece of found wood, over consecutive days. As you move through these daily studies, your eye focuses on different elements of the presentation – the intense detail of a flower bud’s “hairs” or trichomes, for instance, or the deep crimson hue of a wilting blossom’s petal.

“For me my pictures of flowers are an exercise in balance. An arrangement of mass and colour in space. A compositional conundrum of how wrong a picture can be before it tips over the edge of stupidity. Flowers only last a day or two once they are uprooted. These pictures explore the beauty in aging and decay. They measure the old and the fresh. When I look at them, I measure their success simply on how they feel, how they communicate the fragile nature of life and the inevitability of an end.”

Richard Learoyd, 2022