Autumn maples. Japanese garden. Solitude.
Alpha The Wolf was in Alabama on a trip to Birmingham, and Garden Meditation is the withdrawn outing that came out of it - eighteen frames in a Japanese garden, one all-black fit throughout - a textured black knit sweatshirt, dark tactical cargo pants with dangling straps, combat boots, a beaded chain and a heavy blue watch. Most of the roll is shot low: Alpha The Wolf curled on the ground under a pine canopy, knees pulled up, a black head covering drawn forward to shadow his face, autumn leaves across the stone.
One frame breaks the daylight - a night shot on a dark iron bench in a courtyard, face buried in both hands, a small black cat sitting at the edge of the frame. He posted from the garden itself: "Have you considered trading places with your shadow?" tagged #voidchild #void #birminghambotanicalgarden (view the post). Two more from the same stretch: "Tears and cherry blossoms." (view the post) and "In time, I had hoped the pain would fade. Instead it would fester, gaining impossibly in intensity. Instead it would consume me, devour me whole..." (view the post). The rest of the roll is bright, still afternoon: reaching an arm up into the pine branches, sitting against a mossy trunk with the head covering pushed back, then standing at a clay tile-capped earthen wall with blazing red maples rising above it.
The setting is the Japanese garden at Birmingham Botanical Gardens, about three hours south of Nashville in Alabama - the same trip that produced the silhouettes shot at the Birmingham Museum of Art and the rain-curtain frames at Railroad Park. A free public garden that opened in 1967, entered through a tall red torii gate, with a 16th-century tea house, Toshinan, that was shipped over from Japan by way of the 1964 New York World's Fair. It is the second Japanese garden in the catalogue. The Blevins Japanese Garden shoot a year earlier worked Cheekwood's version back in Nashville - a red Panzer Kunst racing jacket at golden hour among the fountains. This one goes the other way: all black, autumn, face hidden, down in the pine understory instead of up at the statuary.
The poses are the point - defensive crouches, a bowed head so low only the crown shows, arms wrapped around shins. Even standing at the wall he is turned down and in, locs draped forward across his face. Only a handful of frames near the gate give the camera a direct, level look.
It ends at a dark timber garden gate, a crimson maple glowing through the opening like fire, Alpha centred in the threshold with one arm up on the beam.
What "Garden Meditation" means
A meditation garden is built to slow a body down, and this shoot takes that to the edge of disappearance - curled on the ground, face covered, still. Have you considered trading places with your shadow: that is more or less the exercise here, the body folding down until it reads as the thing it casts rather than the thing casting it. The frames spend most of their length in the low light under the pines, hard to make out. In the wolf's telling the pack is a source of strength and the father's wisdom is always close, but this is the other register - the animal gone to ground alone, off the path, three hours from home, waiting out the season in a garden built for sitting with yourself. The red maples at the wall are the only thing in frame not trying to be quiet.
SEE ALL 18 PHOTOS FROM THE SHOOT HERE
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