Maja Strgar Kurecic

Floating Garden | I started the Floating Garden series in the summer of 2019. It all began with a single rose. The rose my daughter received for her 18th birthday. This rose prompted me to think about youth, beauty, transience… It brings about the awareness of the inevitability of the end. The mere look at the rose and, quite surely, the thought that my daughter was growing up, drove me to preserve that rose from deterioration, to safeguard its youth. So, without much planning and thinking, I put it in the water and iced it.

After a while, it came to me how to shoot it in order to emphasize the delicate structure of the petals and maintain its natural color. In addition to rose petals, I began experimenting with other flowers, leaves, twigs, grasses, seeds - everything I would find in my garden. I secluded myself with my “treasure” in the children’s room where I submerged it under water in a simple glass bowl, the same one I use for making Sunday lunch. Thus, submerged and illuminated by a desk lamp I began with its transformation. The created images are an ode to the organic, elemental life, as well as an ode to everyday life – not the public one, but quite opposite the most private and intimate one. majastrgarkurecic.com