Life is a Windhauch

I was brushing my hair the other night, and as I looked at my hairbrush, I noticed I had dandelion seeds in my hair and on my brush.

I sighed.

Maybe it hadn’t been the best idea, after all, to bring dandelions home to photograph them…

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A few weeks earlier — it was the beginning of May — I had noticed that the dandelions were in full bloom. Their small yellow hats had popped up: in my lawn, in the cracks of the sidewalk, along the roads, in the supermarket parking lot, in the parks — I even saw one growing out of a hole in a tree. The more I looked for them, the more I realized: they were everywhere!

As the month progressed, I noticed that there were fewer of the yellow flowers and more of the white, fluffy dandelion clocks had appeared. I loved them as a kid so much: I would carefully pick one, and while blowing them, make a wish and watch the tiny seeds fly into the distance like tiny helicopters on a mission.

I never gave it much thought, and I always knew that both the yellow flower and the white fluffy one were called dandelions. But it took me fifty years to realize that a dandelion flower has two life stages: the fragrant and vibrant yellow bloom, and the short-lived — but no less beautiful — fluffy one. For some reason, I had always thought they both grew on the same plant but were somehow different, like maybe the male and female parts of it.

But while observing the plants just outside our house, day after day, I learned that once the first stage — the yellow bloom — is over, the bud closes, and while quietly growing seeds inside, it let go of the yellow petals. Then, in its final stage, it opens up once more— now as a perfectly round, fluffy globe of seeds, ready to set off on their journeys.

I found this revelation quite moving. Once again, I was in awe of the brilliant engineering and design of Mother Nature — so perfect and beautiful. I was reminded of the saying “Das Leben ist wie ein Windhauch” (Life is a breath of wind), which expresses the fleeting and fragile nature of life.

Especially now, as loved ones and I grow older — or disappear from my life entirely — dandelions reminded me how precious each moment is, simply because it won’t last forever and can be over in a Windhauch.

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These thoughts inspired me to bring a few of the dandelions home to photograph them. Of course, I could have photographed them out in the field, but I had done that so much in the past, and I wanted to do something different this time. I wanted to play with the aspect of transience and fragility of these flowers, and to do so, I had to bring them home.

On my first walk to collect some of the fluffy globes, I carefully placed them in a large brown paper bag. But by the time I got home, most of them had already lost many of their seeds and weren’t fluffy or round anymore. What a disappointment!

But thanks to the wisdom of the internet, I learned that if I pick the closed buds - those that had just finished blooming yellow and had not opened again yet - they would still open up within the next 24 hours. And so I went on a dandelion-picking spree. I have no idea how many I brought home over the next few days, but there were a lot: I hung them on a clothesline I spun across my studio, put them in vases, pinned them on a big piece of cardboard, and even tried to make a wreath with some.

I had made a list of all the ideas I came up with on how to photograph them. There is one little spot in my studio where the light hits the wall and floor for a few hours during the day, and that is where I set up my table and camera. I wanted to use only this natural light coming into the room. I was blessed with many sunny days, which gave me plenty of time to photograph these fragile little things.

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As I write this, my studio is still waiting to be cleaned up. I just Googled it: one dandelion seed head has around 200 seeds. I didn’t count, but I think I picked around 150 dandelions, which means I now have roughly 30,000 seeds floating around in my studio.

No wonder I keep finding them in my hairbrush…

But it was all worth it.

Maybe I will put together a zine some time, but for now, I hope you enjoy these diptychs.

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That’s all from me this week.

Thank you so much for being here and for taking the time to read this week’s newsletter. It means a lot to me.

X,

Susanne

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