ATL. Tropical gardens. Old money walls.
Alpha The Wolf was in Atlanta for The Solo Dolo Experience, a Sept. 14, 2024 show at ATL Glow Bar in Lithonia - a separate trip from the one that produced Shadows in ATL and Lanta' Lanes. Hidden Gardens, Atlanta Streets is the outing that came out of this stay: 13 frames moving from a glasshouse jungle to wooded trails to formal flower beds. The Nashville artist works an all-black multi-pocket tactical hoodie over a chest rig, headphones around his neck, a red beaded bracelet on one wrist. His white American Bully is with him for a stretch of it.
The setting is the Atlanta Botanical Garden, the Midtown grounds beside Piedmont Park - confirmed by his own location tag on a post from the visit: "There was a time before, when it didn't hurt so badly. When the VOID didn't squeeze so tightly. Only faint whispers remain." (view the post) The sculpture rising behind him over a waterfall is Earth Goddess - a 25-foot living topiary at the head of the Cascades Garden, a steel frame planted with some 18,000 annuals, built by the Montreal collective Mosaicultures Internationales for the Garden's 2013-14 Imaginary Worlds exhibition and kept on as a permanent fixture. She cradles the waterfall in one open palm. Alpha shoots her mostly from below, half out of focus in the foreground while the moss face holds the frame.
Away from the sculpture it loosens up. He sits on weathered wooden steps throwing a peace sign with the Bully pressed to his side, both looking dead into the lens; snaps a look back over his shoulder on a leaf-strewn trail. The bench frames are the softest in the set.
The Bully has its own thread too - a creek trail, a backlit winter field - here trading open country for manicured beds and a glass pavilion. Alpha recapped the trip afterward, crediting the crew by name: "Atlanta was a movie. I'm very excited to share our behind the scenes Tour // Blog content very soon. Shoutout to my dog, literally! Shoutout to my heart @abigail_kwarteng_. Shoutout to @shot_by_claud for the cinematics. Shoutout to @oleskool_5479, for the VooDoo behind the scenes." (view the post) The same @shot_by_claud - also @shotbyclaudius - who shot cinematics for Blood Diamonds On Broadway and later cut the site's AMV series; Abigail Kwarteng, DJ Nana Yaa, along for this trip too.
The last frames are straight portraits against the flower beds - hands clasped, a two-finger sign, the expression flat.
What "Hidden Gardens, Atlanta Streets" means
The title splits the city in two - the streets, and the walled green spaces most people move past without going in. The shoot spends its whole length inside the second kind: a botanical garden built around a goddess made of soil and plants, tropical rooms under glass, flower beds kept to the inch. All-black tactical gear in a place engineered for calm, the dog off the leash beside him. In the wolf's telling the father's wisdom is close and the pack moves together; here that reads as one man and one animal walking through somebody else's paradise like they hold a key to it.
SEE ALL 13 PHOTOS FROM THE SHOOT HERE
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