Fascinated with the perpetual process of becoming, this series of photographs captures the entanglement of life with death through an exploration of the symbolic and aesthetic qualities of decaying and decomposing matter. By freezing the decay of organic objects in time, the photographs strive to preserve the ephemeral moment when one life form blossoms while another fades; the moment when one life form displaces another, and when the familiar and the ordinary are taken over by the strange and otherworldly.

The deliberate staging of objects, and the choreography of color, light, and texture create an aesthetic that ambiguously mirrors other organisms, bringing them into the frame like phantoms. Meanwhile, the scale oscillates between the micro and the cosmic. Blending life and death in this way becomes a means of grappling with the timeless conflict between the desire to live and the fact of death.

The photographs therefore attempt to challenge the assumption that decay is the antithesis of life, its negative space. Instead, the artist portrays decay as beautiful and suggests that both life and death are integral to processes of renewal. Rotting fruit becomes the fertile ground for new forms of fecundity.

Photographed by: Juhi Puri