Sitting on a Blue Flower is a response to the recent alteration in my seeing and interpretation of light, as well as my understanding of memory and photography after the deaths of my Grandma and Aunt Melanie. My Grandma passed away in February of 2021 from Parkinson’s disease and COVID-19, and two weeks later my Aunt Melanie passed from metastatic breast cancer. When my Aunt was a kid my Grandma would tell her, my Mom, their two sisters and one brother to find a blue flower to sit on while she fixed something to eat. This tradition got passed on to me and my sister and it will continue for generations to come. This is one of the many memories separated by time that my family shares. Familial traditions, details in nature, old photographs and poems like this carry their energy and make me feel like my Grandma and Aunt are still here. While their physical bodies may be gone, I can still feel their presence around and sometimes even see it. As a photographer I’m always looking for light, and ever since their deaths I often see light as an energy rather than just another lens glare or golden hour. Maybe it’s just coincidence, or maybe it really is their spirits speaking to me through hazy light and moments in nature that I will never unsee.
First Edition of 30
36 pages with 16 images
6 x 9 inches
Self-published
Printed by Mixam in Schaumburg, Illinois, USA
Funded by The George Washington University National Press Photographers Association
Poem Hot Are The Days by Joanne Eddy
All photographs © Sydney Walsh
Design and concept © Sydney Walsh
Click here to view the digital version