A Brief Reign

Water holds a recognisable form only for an instant. An impact gathers it into a crown — a rim, a ring of spires — and for a few thousandths of a second the structure stands. Then it disperses. These two images are the two halves of that interval: the shape arriving, and the shape letting go. Both were made beneath an irrigation sprinkler in a public botanical study garden. Grass, moss, a fallen twig. The crown does not appear in a laboratory; it appears where no one is looking, rules a territory a few centimetres across, and abdicates before anyone can see it. It happens again a second later, and again, all afternoon. The eye cannot hold this. A photograph can hold it a little longer — long enough to notice that the collapse is not a failure of the form, but the whole of its nature.