June is the beginning of the East Asian monsoon season. Although it's hot and humid and quite unpleasant as I used to experience while living in Japan, the plants and flowers grow strongly and their scent penetrates deep into the atmosphere. The lush colors of leaves and flowers feed your eyes. Mikiko Hara is a Tokyo-based photographer who captures candid portraits of strangers and her surroundings she encounters in her daily life. In her photographs, we see often seasonal references such as a green rice field in this image from 1998.
Still, nothing is more poignant than this conspicuously grown pink petal hanging under its own weight and the leaves that support it. Depicted flat and painterly (the magic of photography!), the unknown plant's hefty presence makes the steel tower afar look so small and fragile. We know that when people desert the manmade, nature takes over its place. This image symbolically reminds us of this inevitable natural order.
