"By making a connection between one's inner life and the greater world, art transforms not only what we see but who we are. At the heart of this process is empathy."

David Wolf's series 'Nurturing Time - Life in a Backyard Garden' called to mind two of my favourite books, Michael Pollan's 'The Botany of Desire' and 'Second Nature', both about our relationship to and influence on the natural world.

"I unexpectedly became a gardener when I moved into my current home, allowing me to connect with Nature in an altogether different and deeply rewarding way. In the series, 'Nurturing Time', the intimacy of a backyard garden serves as a metaphor for the greater natural world, exploring how we shape and control Nature even as we nurture it. 

Our presence in Nature is depicted in arrangements I've made from plant and flower cuttings taken from my garden. I photograph the plants in isolation as types--often altering them by drying, tying or otherwise reconfiguring their appearance--and in arranged combinations that speak to associations, or suggest contradictions, presented by the assembled elements against a chosen background. A simple cardboard box acts as both neutral container and conceptual envelope to display the arrangements.

Beyond typology, 'Nurturing Time' offers us the richness of the garden and illuminates our connection to it. The assembled flower boxes resonate with a range of emotion, reflecting our own experience of the cycle of life that embraces vitality and decay, abundance and loss. Memory, Time's shadow, is present here, too, as events and lives are evoked and memorialized by these images." - David Wolf.

View the full screen magazine photo feature.

Wolf's photographs have been exhibited nationally at such venues as the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Griffin Museum of Photography, and the Photographic Center Northwest.  He exhibited his current series, Nurturing Time, Life in a Backyard Garden, at the Lishui International Photography Festival in Lishui, China.