Tulipas
A tribute to John Blakemore.
It was about five years ago, in the summer of 2020. The COVID pandemic had swept across the globe, leaving behind much sadness and a world turned upside down, still struggling to return to the normality of the past.
That was the time when I, still timidly exploring the wonderful world of large-format photography, was trying to find suitable subjects for my 4x5 frames—subjects that wouldn’t make me feel like I was wasting my time and materials, which, I must admit, were far from cheap.
I had some tulips in the house, a pale pink colour, if memory serves well, that seemed interesting and worthy of a frame. This whole tulip thing had started somewhere in the back of my mind a few years before—these weren’t the first tulips I had photographed—and it was also the trigger for one of the most special relationships of my life. But let’s not digress…
So I got to work. It took me about half an hour only to arrange them on the floor, right by a glass door that led to the garden, through which a blinding sun poured into the room, mercilessly scorching the tulips and, along with them, the idea of what I was trying to create. I won’t bore you with how long it took to set up the camera and figure out the right settings. Let’s just say it wasn’t quick.
This was the result. Not extraordinary, but I was genuinely happy with it.
Yet, after that unusual effort, I lost some of my inspiration. I still wanted to photograph tulips, though, so I turned to the ever-knowing Google to find a spark of inspiration. In short, without too much fuss or effort, I stumbled upon some breathtaking images by a gentleman I had never heard of—John Blakemore. In my ignorance, I had no idea who he was. But that was it! I was utterly and irrevocably hooked on the elegance and depth of his tulip photographs. They wouldn’t leave my mind.
I wanted to somehow recreate them without copying, so I began a series in which I combined different formats and techniques—two of the frames here are replicas of tintypes—to create something of my own, but very much in the spirit of a tribute to John’s work.
I would have loved to have met John, but I wasn’t quick enough. Sadly, this January, he left us…
A recent comment here on Substack, on an image by Michael Beecham (a beautiful photograph, by the way), rekindled these memories—thank you, Michael. I still keep two prints from the series, which I exhibited at my last show in 2023.
Cheers, John
I often wonder: What is it with tulips? They photograph so beautifully in the right hands. Your images are beautiful. Elegant.