William Parker
Variation IV, from the Green Man series, 1992, hand-colored black and white silver printes (oil and graphite on Oriental VC paper), 20" x 19"
My recent hand-colored photographs stem from research focused on the counterpart of Mother Nature, the archetypal Green Man, an anthropomorphized representation of earthly matter and vegetational fertility, most apparent in art, literature, mythologies, and rituals of Egypto-Roman, Medieval, and Renaissance times. Considering it urgent for men of current patriarchal cultures to oppose rampant ecological carelessness and environmental devastation, my four serial images of a male clutching plant life symbolically configure, through physiognomical expression, possible states of masculine reaction today to being identified with vegetative nature, so often solely associated with matriarchy and the feminine. Initially portrayed is an expression of grotesque contemptuousness, followed by visages of uncertainty and awe, then the final image of the male—whose forehead is emblazoned with the projection of an exquisite leaf captured photographically by the 19th-century Frenchman Charles Aubry—appearing as a serenely assured and protecting representative of the green world of our endangered planet.
