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Joys of Harvest
September 2001
As autumn approaches we reap the rewards of all the hard work done in the spring and summer. The fruits and vegetables we nourished are now ripe and ready for picking. We can experience esthetic joys by admiring their freshness, their color, their fullness, and at the same time anticipate the pleasures that await those who will be served with them at the table. The camera can capture both what our eye sees and what make our taste buds salivate. But it also can add another ingredient ñ a beautifully composed image. Our photographer for this issue, Jim Smith, has shown us how that extra quality can make works of art out of the most common objects we see at this time of the year.
Our cover photograph features a basket of vegetables that any of us might carry away from an afternoon shopping, although our purchases might not look quite so appetizing. It is doubtful that the assortment would have been arranged with such a knowing eye ñ the four ripe red tomatoes in the center, the three rich yellow heads of corn rising in the rear, the light green string beans curving gracefully below on the left, the dark green lettuce on the lower right, and the suggestion of asparagus on the upper left. The Dutch painters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who specialized in still-life subjects could not have done a better job in arranging the composition.
We see the same skill in the photograph of the giant scallions ñ this time not so much in arranging the elements but in capturing clusters that make such a fine combination of forms ñ and also show the richness of the individual white forms. The same is true in the image of the large onion surrounded by pieces of garlic, with the forms emerging dramatically from a dark background like the subject of a Rembrandt painting. In the photographs of grapes, string beans, corn and squash, there is an inter-play of shadow and light that creates a pattern that would be ideal for a fine textile design.
All of these vegetables could well be the ingredients for a great feast, but shown here they are a feast for the eye that all of us can appreciate.
— David Finn
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