Flowers frozen in time.

by The REJIGIT Blog


Cape Town based photographer Bruce Boyd and artist Tharien Smith collaborated on a series entitled 0° featuring flowers frozen and encased in ice.

In Bruce’s words, the 0° project initially involved experimenting with photographing flower ice-blocks against the light and results were mediocre. One day when we were done we dropped an ice-block into a nearby swimming pool. The flowers caught the light beautifully and the surrounding blue backdrop completed the picture. I was fascinated by how the clinical nature of the ice and the emotional nature of the flowers contrasted, and a how a type of beautiful melancholy emerged.

We spent the next six months photographing more than a hundred blocks of ice-arrangements. Most of the time the conditions weren’t perfect or the ice-blocks had developed a cloudiness, which obscured the flowers. After a few months we perfected the process and were able to get together enough material for an exhibition. The preparation process involves freezing flowers overnight in plastic containers and then photographing them at dawn in the nearest pool, stream or puddle. The ice-blocks crack randomly when hitting the water and together with the random bubbles formed during freezing, create individually unique images.

Bruce has also produced “The wild ones”, which photo documented the feral horses which roam wild in the wetlands between the Kleinmond and Botrivier lagoons within the Rooisand Nature Reserve. 

All images courtesy of Bruce Boyd Photography