Fall
Photographs by Christopher Griffith
Verse by Walt Whitman
Text by Dr. Philip A. Rea

Exhibition / Bios

The idea for Fall came to photographer Christopher Griffith while he was living in a Manhattan brownstone, finalizing the design for his first monograph, States (powerHouse Books, 2000). “It was mid-November,” Griffith recalls, “and the ivy on the side of my building seemed to be literally glowing outside my window. I picked a single leaf off the vine and saw that, dependent upon the angle of light and the position of the leaf, I could see the most incredible texture and color through the leaf.” Excited by this discovery, Griffith spent the next couple of days experimenting with how to capture it all onto film. That was four years ago. He has now perfected the technique of both photographing the foliage and getting it to his studio and on film before it wilts or turns brown, quite a feat as many of these fresh and delicate leaves were collected and transported personally by Griffith from hundreds of miles away.

A hyper-macroscopic analysis of the color transformations characteristic of tree foliage in the northeastern United States autumn, Fall features vivid and brilliant images of nature’s gifts, which we often take for granted. Fantastically backlit, glowing colors are transmitted through the leaves, illustrating structural and textural elements of nature never before captured on film. For this former student of research biology, the project transported Griffith back to his early days of plant biochemistry, but this time as an artist, not a scientist. “When you look at a tree that is turning, it appears to have an overall uniformity of color,” Griffith observes. “But it is only when you literally get into the tree and get personal with the individual components of that breathtaking color, that you see the truly astounding variety of that color transformation. For me, leaves are like snowflakes; no two are ever the same.”

Exhibition

The powerHouse Gallery, New York
October 21–November 20, 2004
digital c-prints also available

About the authors

Christopher Griffith trained to be a research biochemist in the field of genetic engineering before quitting four months shy of his Ph.D. to take up photography. Initially as a fashion photographer in Paris and London and now as an art and advertising photographer, Griffith’s clients have recently included British Airways, Wrangler, Chrysler, Hewlett-Packard, Toyota, and the recent launch of SWISS International Air Lines. States (powerHouse Books, 2000), his first monograph, won the Silver Medal for both photography and book design at New York’s Art Directors Club in 2001. Born in Canada, Griffith was raised in the United States and educated in Canada and Britain. He lives in Brooklyn.

Dr. Philip A. Rea is a member of and professor at the Plant Science Institute, Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Rea has published some one hundred papers and book chapters, was awarded the Presidents Medal of the Society for Experimental Biology and the Penn Award for Excellence in Biology Teaching, and is head of the Penn Biology Proteomics Facility. Rea and Griffith first met at McGill University where Rea served as Griffith’s senior thesis advisor in plant membrane transport mechanisms. Rea lives in Ardmore, Pennsylvania.