My Year In A Single Photograph

December 2020

For the last month I’ve known I needed to visit the Rose Garden in NW Portland. I felt called there, and I ignored it. In the coming weeks I’d rationalized why I hadn’t heeded the call saying I was busy— which is true. Yet, I knew if I didn’t follow through with this prompting I would regret it.

Early on a Saturday morning, I packed my camera bag, left my husband to tend to our children and went. Arriving at the garden, I argued internally with the parking meter. How much time would I need to discover what I was called there to see? Why was I even called here in the first place, December is hardly the month to see roses! The parking meter took my money and said nothing.

I wandered through the garden for nearly an hour. I was aimless, and yet delighted. With the rose bushes pruned low for the season it was easy to see the entire garden and spot the flecks of color where roses were, in fact, blooming.

The cold was biting and my fingers were numb as I operated my camera. I eased seamlessly into each lighting environment, my memory alert to the settings needed to embrace the light. F8 1/160 ISO 200 for the rose by the gardeners shed. F 5.6 1/160 ISO 800 for the deep red blooms by the stone wall. The photographs I made were unoriginal, but I made them anyway. I snaked between the rows, bouncing from each little bloom I spied, and that’s when I felt it.

A burning in my chest and water springing to my eyes. Beneath my muddy boots and wrapped in mulch and brittle fallen leaves was a rose bush. Fallen over, lowly and trampled down from the heavy rain, it was tragically forgotten. Despite the December cold, it was blooming.

In an instant I knew why I was called to the garden. A quote by Fyodor Dostoevsky came to my mind, “Beauty will save the world.” This bush was a symbol of my year and I needed to make a photograph of it.