Of Time is Barbara Brown's latest photographic series. This work takes plant material at different points throughout the growing season and brings multiple phases of growth into a single image. The result goes beyond the binary narrative of decline or renewal, offering instead an expanded view of duration.

Brown’s work enters a long-standing tradition of considering the garden and the sunflower within Western art history. From Vincent van Gogh and Emil Nolde to Anselm Kiefer, these motifs have often carried symbolic weight, standing in for vitality, endurance, or historical trauma. They have also been shaped overwhelmingly by a masculine visual tradition that favours assertion, monumentality, and metaphor. Brown approaches this history differently. 

Brown’s images remain grounded in direct curatorial observation. Flowers, seed heads, stems, dirt, twigs, and leaves are arranged into living systems. The sunflower, in particular, is not exulted; it is shown as is, in a continuity with its environment. 

The techniques used, perspective, ratios, and composition are meant to place the viewer within the garden rather than outside it. This perspective emphasizes proximity, care, and attention. In equal measure, Brown’s images appear as responsive spaces, shaped by human intervention and natural process. 

Made during a period of ecological and cultural uncertainty, Of Time centers on presence, duration, and close observation, inviting sustained attention to the subtle shifts that shape lived experience.