Joachim Lapotre: Fruit Seed Photography.

The photo above from the French photographer Joachim Lapotre really took my attention when I first saw it simply because it is an oddity and as with all oddities, it stood out from others within his collection. While there is actually a Marshmallow Plant from which certain Marshmallow ingredients are found I do not believe that Lapotre was playing upon that comparison, rather the idea that Marshmallows are seeds from which you can grow more. An idea similar to the money tree concept, which while there are real money trees they don’t flower notes and coins – unfortunately.

This second photo is another by Lapotre which follows within the same line of thought, at first I believed this was a real melon segment which took away the original meaning shared between the two images. However on closer inspection I can see that it is actually a marshmallow piece that looks like a melon segment which adds another layer of meaning to this photo in comparison to the first. On its most basic level this is a photo of a marshmallow melon look-alike segment with a plant sprouting out of it. Going one level deeper the same theme as shown within the first photo become apparent; the idea that Marshmallows are seeds of the Marshmallow plant is apparent here to. However here the marshmallow actually looks like a segment of a real seed: the melon, something that makes you stop and think “is that really a marshmallow?”

Both photos are more than just an image within a frame, they are to myself works of art and have both been cleverly produced. I am very interested to learn how Lapotre put together the object, whether he just stuck some sprouts into the marshmallows or let them grow from the inside out. I may continue upon this line of thought and produce a series of my own.