Work the Soul Must Have
35mm Film Photographs. Selected works - spring 2020.

“There is a particular photograph, taken by Johanna Tagada-Hoffbeck this past spring, of the skin of an onion, gossamer-thin and quietly glowing as it rests on a sheet she has laid out in her garden to take the picture. Wonderfully vermillion and still half-formed, it holds the contours of the food it once encased.

Something about this suggestion of history, however small, is a poignant clue to the series as a whole. ‘An entire world unfolds in each petal,’ Tagada-Hoffbeck muses, in the diary she kept alongside these photographs, and we begin to see that sentiment unfold through her eyes. Elsewhere, baskets of verdant herbs overflow; rows and rows of bulbs are placed in lines into the soft brown earth; and clusters of yellow-orange flowers are grouped together in the evening light like little Sulphur lamps strung through long grass. All of life can be found in the garden.”

This series was published as a book by Jane & Jeremy (UK, 2022).

-> Read the full essay by Joanna L. Cresswell via The Planthunter.