Simple Beauty: A Photography Exhibit by Roya Zarrehparvar

ON DISPLAY: May 2 - June 30

"My exhibition “Simple Beauty”, is a series of photographs taken of flowers. On the outset I knew I wanted the exhibition to be in B&W, and for that reason I wanted to shoot only white flowers, but in the interim I bought other colors, just because they were so beautiful. I have always loved photographing flowers, but for this project I wanted the flowers to stand on their own, shot in studio on a white background verse out in nature. I wanted this isolation to be able to see every detail. I enjoy getting as close to the petals as I can, in the viewfinder the petals take on a different dimension, sometimes they do not even appear as
flowers but instead very abstract.

"Photographing dying, wilting flowers is especially gratifying, they seem to have an edge, a crispness, one could even say they appear wild, while live flowers are soft, delicate, and tender looking. When photographing these flowers, I would sometimes leave them for a day or two and return to photograph them again, every day, they opened up a little more, bent differently, revealed a little more, and slowly the anther withers and the petals would fold back. Photographing the anemones was especially beautiful as the center of the flower has layers over layers of filament and anthers that are dark purple that turn to powder, simply beautiful. The camera has given me the opportunity and closeness to capture the details that fascinate me about nature."