Russell Carpenter says:

"When I first saw the flower photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe some
twenty years ago they stopped me cold with both their beauty and
paradox. Each one was the eye of a hurricane with many potent forces
swirling around a still center. In the past few years, as an antidote
to the organized mayhem called film making and sensing that the inner
world of flowers might teach me great lessons, I decided to venture
into their complex and simple worlds which at their core seem to
effortlessly unify both beauty and terror, passion and gentleness, the
angelic and sexual in one body...they accept their contradictions
without contradiction.

I think, in essence, in the better photographs I'm trying to make the
experience of 'tao" a palpable experience. The force which crafts the
horseshoe nebula I try to capture as it forges the individual flower.
In some ways, the flowers stand in for the life processes that shape
each of us, those forces and conflicts we spend a lifetime trying to
reconcile. I concentrate on the flower itself in most cases, not on
its container or surroundings, hopefully stripping enough away that we
can see straight into the heart of the matter."

Cheers... and enjoy our different but ONE world.

warm regards,
Sunny