ZGEAF exhibition of graphic design, Zagreb, Croatia
March 2012
March 2012
GAROFANO (Dianthus caryophyllus)
INSTRUCTIONS
1. roll
2. put in a vase
The carnation has always been associated to big things and deep emotions.
It is believed that the origin of the language of flowers, a complex system of symbols where to each flower is assigned a specific meaning, in 1819 was influenced by the Turkish tradition of Selam:
method of communication between lovers with which was possible to send messages "without even dirtying your fingers with ink".
When the Victorian era ended, the popularity of flowers began to wane.
Queen Victoria died in 1901; little more than a decade later, the world was in war.
The two world wars changed forever the way to relate to the world around us.
It began to look with detachment and criticism, calling it "sentimentality", that Victorian feeling that
allows emotions to influence decisions.
It was the beginning of the age of reason, logic and science.
I wanted to go back to the''sentiment'', photographing flowers and printing them on paper,
in order to make them alive forever,
to a single purpose: to say what can not be said,
and do it with grace and beauty.
txt courtesy: Vanessa Diffenbaugh, The language of flowers
What does the carnation mean? Absolutely nothing, but it is precisely this that no one could ever guess.
Oscar Wilde, 1892
