Reproductive organs

Here and below are the comments of photographer Svetlana Tepavtsevich: “I did not plan this project. One day, while walking, I found something unusual. The item was dirty and damaged, but I was struck by its exquisite mesh structure and strange beauty. It was too fragile to be an animal skull and looked like a lot of things. It took me a while to finally realize that it was the inner shell of a grape pod. During my walks, I often saw them. They are green and look like a strange mixture of a porcupine and a medieval cannonball. This little item made me look at it more closely and look for something else.”

(Total 13 photos)

1. Compared to the large and complex life forms that emerge from seeds and their vessels, they themselves are much smaller and appear simple. The cone of a huge sequoia, for example, is slightly larger than an egg, and its seeds are the size of oatmeal.

2. But they are just as exquisitely complex and mysterious as everything else in nature. When I started creating my photographs, transformation was my main idea.

3. Small must become big, micro must become macro.

4. I wanted the photographs to radiate energy, focus on detail, and reveal the wide variety of forms an object can take.

5. To me, these objects are evidence of the serious elasticity of life.

6. Many of the seeds and pods in the photo are from city trees that seem to be growing out of asphalt.

7. They remind me that whatever the circumstances, the main goal of life is to reproduce yourself.

8. They also remind me of the complexities of nature around us, of the complexities that remain invisible to us.

9. Finally, for me, many of these pictures are reminiscent of death.

10. One photo shows the seed of a tree that has been cut, the other shows a sequoia cone that needs to be burned so that it starts seeding.

11. Round pods look like naked meteorites or planets flying through space.

12. Everything is fleeting.

13. I think about the bottomless space beyond the Earth and how these small but important particles of life reflect this bottomlessness.