Julia Schauenburg is a German-born, Australia-based commercial and fine art photographer. She embarked on a year-long series, 52 bunches of flowers I bought myself, in which she documents the wilted remnants of flowers she bought herself each week. Schauenburg’s concept is brilliant and her execution spot-on; her intense, singular-focus and stark simplicity bring the concept to life with beauty and poignancy.
I have spent one year buying myself flowers every week. I am giving myself flowers, in appreciation of myself…
I watch them die, I take their photograph, like a mug shot, a document of their existence an honor to mine. I document the moment of loss, the moment when romance turns into nostalgia…
The gesture of giving flowers is the desire to manifest, in real time, an emotion, which is timeless in its nature. The tragedy lies within its inherent truth, its eventual death…
By photographing a part of its process, the part before the romantic moment gets destroyed, is the moment I am capturing, documenting and keeping…
As Hippocrates said, ‘Life is short, Art is long.’