Seeing Color, Greens

A photographer's resilience practice

Hello my friends,

Last week was all about light (and dark); This week it’s about seeing color…and how green assertively presented itself…and how grateful I am because, well, green is so, green!¹

While on my walk yesterday, these blades of grass reminded me of comfrey in the compost pile and how I love to fill a frame, especially a square frame, where all sides are equal, which seems particularly important right now, to have balance, which is, of course, the very thing that comfrey does for the soil,²

and thinking about comfrey reminded me of the year curly kale self-seeded and flourished, maybe because of the comfrey nearby or the rich composty soil in which it grew…

…and looking at this older photograph brought me back to the present and the curled stems and leaves of this plant laying on sand next to the field by the river that flooded a few years back and left this ‘beach’ where no beach should be,

but there are so many things out of place right now, it seems just fine to have a beach next to a field, kind of like the lush mass of ferns and purple vetch growing at the landfill near a towering pile of construction debris - - nature flourishing where least expected…

…as was this fern surrounded by grasses and moss on a steep hillside below the golf course behind our new condo…completely unexpected and only revealed because the light was at that just right angle.

I can’t go on. I’ve been mimicking my brother’s propensity for lengthy parenthetical sentences, which are magical in their descent into his associative thought processes, but which take a lot of concentration to follow.³

But, as happens, thinking about ferns reminded me of this silhouette from my parent’s property in Sharon, Vermont that I created just a few months after my mother died.

These images remind me how magical it is to not just follow light, but to see color as well.

Like this tangle of plastic at the farm I now walk by on a regular basis, memories and current micro-moments merge, especially when paying particular attention to a theme, like the color green, just as the world is becoming brown, black and white.

It is odd, though, how when you look for a thing, you see that thing - - over and over - - and other colors or shapes fade away, obscured by attention to a single thing, like, in my case this morning, green stuff.⁴

It is such a surprise and delight, but also kind of weird, to have the sun illuminate just what you are looking for - - not plastic chairs or a 4-wheeler, but the color, in its many manufactured and natural forms.

So when coming home, along the same path where I’d seen the ferns nestled beneath the large rock, the moss framed these tree tendrils, which aren’t really tendrils, because they’re not threadlike, but which feel like tendrils nonetheless.

And now, I’m distracted by the texture of the bark on these protruding roots and realize that next week I’ll need to see what happens when I honor the texture of things…because it is this very set of associations, from light to color to texture that ensures balance in uncertain times.⁵

This practice of seeing these particular ideas (because light, color and texture are as much ideas as they are things) is what helps me cultivate resilience…over and over again.

Thank you for meandering down this green path and for sharing your time and this space with me.

With gratitude for you being you,

Lyn

And check out the marvelous biodegradable bags in our community compost bin this week - - Such a relief to see the greens, as our bucket was filled with yellows and off whites. What have you been composting this week, not just in the bin, but in your life? Reflections welcome in the comments section.

PS: It seems this is a week for gratitude to my sister and brother, whose work inspires me all the time. In addition to mimicking my brother’s writing style (see footnote below), I also created an audio voiceover this week, because that’s what my sister did for the first time on Tuesday on her Substack, The Gusset).

1. Let’s just get it out there - - Green is my very favorite color…this week. I love that it is between blue (color of the sky) and yellow (color of the sun) on the spectrum and that it is the symbol of health and vitality, balance, fertility and renewal. Bliss…and the perfect counterpoint to all that feels so out of balance ‘out there.’

2. In permaculture and sustainable gardening, Comfrey is considered a ‘nutrient accumulator’ because its deep roots bring nutrients from subsoils to the surface, the leaves then shade the soil and when cut back, the leaves offer mulch that adds nutrients to the soil.

It is also referred to as a ‘cut and come again’ herb, because it keeps regrowing all summer - - In my old garden I could cut it back at least three different times during the summer, like a continuous fountain of goodness for the garden.It is interesting that the images from memory - - the comfrey, kale and vetch at the landfill - - all also contain purple, green’s complement - - and the images from this week contain browns, grays or blacks.

3. My brother, Benjamin C. Swett, recently published a new book, The Picture Not Taken: On Life and Photography. It is a memoir in essays that explores the intersections between photography, memory, family snapshots and love. If you want to learn more about me and my family, check it out!

4. But it’s not really all that interesting, since those memory images all came from summer months and we’re not deep into the fall. I think, though, I must have a subconscious longing for that lushness, even though I generally love this time of year…

5. My practice of paying attention to a different idea each week, like light or color, helps me stay alert, to not get stuck in a rut…Because it’s so easy to just see one thing, or believe one thing, all the time.

It just seems, well, more democratic, more balanced, to shift focus, while still doing the same thing, like, in my case, creating images with a bulky mechanical device filled with glass lenses and other materials.