A responsibility to awe

One winter morning a few years ago, I woke to find the ground covered with a layer of fresh snow. As I walked through the yard, I saw a raccoon skull on the driveway. The textures of the skull contrasted with the white of the snow -- it was almost as if the skull was being presented to me. How had that happened? I proceeded to collect the skull and brought it to my studio, where, over the next few days, I photographed it in order to better understand it. 

The first image shows the skull on a piece of wood, actually my studio floor. The image was captured on Ferrania P30 film using a Leica SL2 and a 50 mm Summicron lens. P30 film is a new version of the film stock used by Fellini and others in the 1960s.

What makes skulls so interesting as subject matter? I think Rebecca Elson can help us here. She was an astronomer and poet whose sole book of poetry is called “A Responsibility to Awe”. The final stanza of her poem "Antidotes to Fear of Death", gives an interesting perspective on skulls:

To walk across the cobble fields

Of our discarded skulls,

Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,

Thinking: whatever left these husks

Flew off on bright wings.

Skull or chrysalis, the second image was made using the Rolleiflex SL66. One the features that help make this camera so unique is the ability to reverse-mount the lenses to the camera body for close-up (macro) shooting. For this image, I used the reverse mounted 80 mm standard lens. One of the issues with using this set-up is the super shallow depth of field, but I think it works in this image.

I wonder what new art will fly off on bright wings from the husks of 2020?