CHRIS ENOS: Santa Fe-based Chris Enos has been an artist/photographer for over 40 years. This work is from her “Flower Series," a collection of original, large-format Polaroid close-ups of flower blossoms and produced between 1979 and 1983 using a rare Polaroid 20” x 24” camera.

ABOUT | Flower Series
Large intimate - if not erotic - images and photographs of flowers have a long list of popular antecedents in art history. All too easily we can conjure up the work of Georgia O’Keefe, Edward Weston, or Karl Blossfeltd. However, Enos has a unique point of view within this genre and these are not just predictable images of flowers; these blooms are in the first stages of withering. Through this work, Enos wanted to deal with the balance between beauty and decay stating that she started the work “at a time when her hair was half gray." Thus, the flowers serve as a metaphor for aging.

The technology used to produce these prints - once highly revered Polaroid film and cameras - has also seen its flowering and decay. Moreover, how fitting that these images should be shown now in a Santa Fe gallery that celebrates “ancient contemporary.' One might also consider their exhibition something of a homecoming, since (legend has it) Edwin Land, the inventor of this famous instantaneous image making system, brainstormed the whole Polaroid process while walking around Santa Fe some sixty years ago. New digital technology has made Polaroid prints obsolete. Like the flowers which are aging, so too are those who once had mastery of this instant photo technology. Scarce, these works will gain new audiences in the years to come.