Flowers are hard. How does one get beyond or engage with the cultural associations surrounding flowers, namely beauty, femininity, and the temporality of life, death and love in an original manner? Initially, I tried to resist the seductive pull of the subject matter, afraid that I would suffocate in its rich, cloying symbolism. It was a futile effort. Not surprisingly, part of me willingly succumbed to the luscious delicateness and intoxicating sensuousness of all things floral.
Like the first trip to a self-help group, I twitched nervously before timidly confessing my exploratory attempts with these burdened motifs to a number of female artist friends. Joy of joy I was not alone! Some of them too had been having the same wrestling matches, acutely aware of the perils of flower imagery (the connection to domesticity, the changing meanings of flowers culturally and over the centuries…), but nevertheless feeling the same compulsion to wade in.
Reference after reference tumbled out; exchanged and cooed over like juicy titbits of gossip or a Nigella recipe. Get hold of the gorgeous Flowers issue of the Spanish photography magazine Exit! Read the seminal essay, The Language of Flowers by George Bataille. Have you seen the unique and magnificently crazy Glass Flowers Collection with it’s over 3000 models at the Harvard Museum of Natural History in Massachusetts? Go research Marc Quinn’s show Evolution at White Cube Mason’s Yard from January/February of this year. Yes dear reader, I have done these things and more as background to my “flower” projects which include: the origami-folding of cosmos flowers, the creation of a new rose, the white floribunda Rosa Neeta Madahar and a new photographic portrait series Flora that I am currently embarking upon. The latter, to an extent, paying homage to the siren-like colour photographs of Madame Yevonde that, in many instances, demonstrate her idiosyncratic interweaving of beauty and femininity with elements from nature, all with a touch of whimsical larking about!
This edition of Leisure Centre is offered up as another tasty morsel for those of you with a penchant for flowers, but without the desire to use your back pocket as a vase à la Morrissey. Most of the contributors, like me, have a number of toes in photography, but with a big toe or two reserved for their love of the written word. My thanks go to Laura, Lisa, Kate, Peter and Mel for feeling free enough to share their flower-themed expressions in the play space that is Leisure Centre. And a big thank you to Rosie for giving us this fertile plot in the first place.

Neeta Madahar