Pop's Garden

The flowers are from a series I call "Pop’s Garden." It’s part of a personal evolution. Pop was my ten-year-old cousin who died of AIDS. His mother, my favorite cousin, was a drug user, and he was born with the virus. For the first time in my life, I felt helpless and lost. For two years, shooting the flowers kept me going through my grief and brought new meaning to making images. I started to think, “What is photography, really?” and, also, what are the power and the meaning of the image. The flower is life. When you think about the history of the world and its time span, the life span or the season of a flower is no different than our own brief life span. Because flowers are cut, there is a situation of momentary life, like a life span that can be any length—but the whole thing is just a moment.