Hyde Cabinet #13: Thorns in Time

This photograph of a bouquet of French-Chinese hybridized roses paradoxically seems both dreamily imaginary and tangibly realistic. The nonspecific backdrop and hazy lighting idealize the blossoms as if re-creating a dream whose contents can be filled in by the viewer. Although these popular roses were best known for their vibrant tints, the black-and-white palette—determined by the period’s available technology—allowed the viewer expansive imaginative freedom. Perhaps the dream was about a certain exoticism for foreign, especially Asian, objects, graphics, and motifs that were fashionable at the time. Such Orientalist ideas were part of an imperialistic attitude that pervaded this age, but which in retrospect appears as what we today call cultural appropriation. The parched petals, spindly thorns, and insect-eaten holes remind viewers of the imperfection of even cultivated nature—an imperfection that reveals injustice and death. Not even the printing chemicals and industrial techniques can preserve an ideal beauty; acidic drips speckling the print echo the flaws in the subject matter. In one photograph, history’s complex layers unfold: the imaginary and real play out the contradictions of the Orientalized imperialism that underlaid and undercut French culture—as well as many other Western cultures—then as now.