Equivalents

Igor Doncov

I am a nonprofessional landscape photographer based in Oregon who is retired. I photograph for the flow state it induces and for the personal discoveries I uncover. Intimate landscapes that elicit strong emotions are what I look for. My current interest is in images whose meaning are derived from the visual forms of the subject matter. 

Photographers don’t usually progress in a linear manner. Rather, it usually occurs in a stepwise manner. Several years ago, I made a breakthrough image that marked a change in my imagery. It was the following image.

This image was not particularly well received on social media or even among friends, but I found it riveting. What was it about? Ostensibly it was an image of a section of a stump of a tree, but that’s not what I saw when I looked at it. I never saw the root as wood but instead saw bone. And once I directed my attention to the flowers, my imagination took off further, and I saw the image as the circle of life with all its phases. I was so fascinated by this image that I hung a print of it in my bedroom.