Author's Description:

I created Botanical Collection No. 1 with flower compositions that I photographed as resource images, intending to later paint. I’m a painter. And the funny thing is that I don’t have to be a great painter to say that. Photography allows me to look at a composition and study its angles— similar to painting, but separate, with less stress and, for me, a lot less mess.

While I worked on creating the images, I learned a lot about what made my compositions appealing to me. I looked at lines to see if I could draw them in paint. I looked for little details that, however minute, would define my marks in a painting. But, finally I began to look for the way that the lighting I positioned illuminated what I wanted to see most in the picture. And, as this originally small body of work grew, and my skills at capturing the light that I saw developed, I looked at the images as a collection all of their own. They became separate from what I would paint. They became images that I liked as photographs.

I laid the photographs out along the floor on the backs of black backing board and chose each final image as I printed them out. Some images were better than others, but remained in the collection because they had helped me to see something that without publishing them I would only forget. Other images were chosen because they were showing me a new way of seeing myself and viewing my own ideology of  art + work. Nothing gritty or gripping, nothing tortured or criminal for this collection. These are all images I now know by heart.

All images © S. Migneco. All Rights Reserved. Please contact for usage terms.