What begins with a sunflower in her mother’s garden returns years later during an afternoon of photographs, music and fading summer light — carrying with it a thought about instinct, memory and the things we are naturally drawn back to. Photographed by Tim Batist. Text and Model: Lo
A reminder of the love I once had for myself. And a series
of photographs as proof of the feral retrieval of the long-
lost self.
2022.
I see the people-like-sunflowers at the park somewhere
mid-April.
Faces reaching for the first rays of gold.
No words disrupting the songs of spring.
Hands holding. Dogs stretching. Birds nesting.
“What would you like to be when you grow older?”
I want to be like the people-like-sunflowers at the park of
my hometown.
I wrote extensively about it as I was watching a
sunflower in my mother’s garden redefining the
word grace, as if it was her destiny.
She reminded me every day of her feral beauty and how
it moved everything around her.
Her head twisting gracefully towards what fed her soul.
Her neck inviting every passing stranger to call in
passion, I am certain.
She was elegant and fierce, soft and vulnerable, yet
strong and stable.
She didn’t ask the weed how to reach the sun. She
simply followed her instinct.
Two weeks ago, Tim wrote to me to ask if I wanted to
shoot in a sunflower field.
My heart replied instantly:
YES
Upon arrival, they stared at me, the sun and her flowers.
They looked thirsty and a little disoriented, I thought.
I knew I saw a reflection of myself and how I had felt
the past few months:
a bit ‘sec’, a bit burnt out, a bit lost.
“Do you think it’ll work?” I asked Tim.
I wasn’t really talking about the thirsty sunflowers.
“Of course.”
He grabbed the camera and put on some songs by
Hermanos Gutiérrez, as he knew I loved them and could
easily ground myself through their music.
“Did you know,” he continued, “that sunflowers look
away from the sunset because they already redirect
themselves towards the sunrise of the next day? In that
way, sunflowers have a memory. They don’t forget what
feeds them.”
That’s when it clicked. That’s what pulled my feet into
the earth and my heart into the dirt.
I instantly flashed back to my sunflower in my mother’s
garden and the self-love spilling out of my pen like lava,
painting my journal in caramelized honey and gold.
A wild woman doesn’t forget what feeds her soul. She
remembers.
The 8:37 PM sun burning upon my feral body,
surrounded by flowers that reflect a woman’s inner
realm.
She returns to herself.
Remembering.
Through movement.
Through play.
Through art.
Through the words of a fellow wanderer.
Remembering the instinct.
That what was there before the world taught us to doubt.
Thank you, Tim. For redirecting me towards the retrieval
of the long-lost self.
– Lo
(Lauren Vanmullem)
