Author
James Darton
Contributing Editor
The temporal nature of a good bloom is in many ways one of it’s most enticing charactersitics - you know when you get a glimpse up close of an unfurled flower in all it’s glory that it’s time on this earth is inherently limited. At their most powerful, flowers give us the chance to pause and ponder the fleeting nature of beauty (seen through the beauty of nature!).
Luckily, the universal allure of flowers mean that they pop up all over the place in more lasting mediums: here we salute some of the individual stems to have secured their place in history, thanks to the unwavering gaze of a camera lens.
Billie Holiday with white gardenia in her hair
![1 Floom Magazine Iconic Images Billie Holiday Gardenia 1](https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_iconic_images_billie_holiday_gardenia_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=1440&s=4be1d0bc1ed3028ad0fe1bb384e65ca7 1440w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_iconic_images_billie_holiday_gardenia_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=1000&s=fa932a3661a65ce8d0ab176518c0e280 1000w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_iconic_images_billie_holiday_gardenia_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=600&s=78a91706016546cae913fe4994e040bc 600w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_iconic_images_billie_holiday_gardenia_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=400&s=86b30e2da473184c29a876a1cbc3bc38 400w)
There’ll always be the voice of course - smokey tones melting into outright anguish and raw emotion at times - but beyond that there’ll always be her favourite way of garnishing her stage presence: the white gardenias that would sit in her hair.
It’s almost too perfect an accompaniment: beautiful like Holiday’s voice in the most unassuming of ways. Her voice never received the embellishments of formal training and likewise the flowers in her hair were presented plainly as they came - the simple beauty of a crisp white bloom, plucked and positioned just so. To add further plain-spoken magic to things, the story goes that she only started wearing the flowers when an accident with a pair of curling tongs pre-show forced Holiday to find something that could quickly cover the bald patches. Sure beats, ‘well I was at a music festival and everyone was doing it…’
Tilda Swinton as shot by Tim Walker
![1 Floom Magazine Iconic Images Tilda Swinton Tim Walker For W Magazine 1](https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_iconic_images_tilda_swinton_tim_walker_for_w_magazine_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=1440&s=4c7634eec8a5d10d529e29987b8556d2 1440w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_iconic_images_tilda_swinton_tim_walker_for_w_magazine_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=1000&s=83b0a31020502b044618303ec06902c5 1000w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_iconic_images_tilda_swinton_tim_walker_for_w_magazine_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=600&s=0a64cea7c7ef3b4d3a8397a495abf618 600w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_iconic_images_tilda_swinton_tim_walker_for_w_magazine_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=400&s=4318e485c0aa6c2b2164d7c7123d2211 400w)
It’s difficult to imagine a more perfect pairing than Tilda Swinton and Tim Walker - intensely charismatic and convention-defying actor meets… intensely charismatic and convention-defying photographer.
Together, the pair created a phantasmagoric photo series inspired by the great surrealists: tastes of Salvador Dali, Giorgio de Chirico and Remedios Varo all rise to the surface in an homage to the bizarre jungle paradise built by Edward James in the heart of Mexico. Swinton poses amidst oddly fashioned dioramas, perhaps most strikingly against a backdrop of blue skies while disembodied hands waft roses across what appear to be ecstatic throes. The image at once captures a deeper beauty in both the actor and the flowers: both wonderfully natural and disarmingly otherworldly all at once.
Jane Birkin
![1 Floom Magazine Iconic Images Jane Birkin From Vogue Magazine 1](https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_iconic_images_jane_birkin_from_vogue_magazine_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=1440&s=d6bc8ddc338bb2a6dea31cb5333a548f 1440w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_iconic_images_jane_birkin_from_vogue_magazine_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=1000&s=cb130c03268af6fa06b6661d37b55aa5 1000w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_iconic_images_jane_birkin_from_vogue_magazine_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=600&s=cf96f8bf1e3de8a3ad465dba89b2ea42 600w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_iconic_images_jane_birkin_from_vogue_magazine_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=400&s=a0949a045aefa8626814deaf237e92d2 400w)
Before she became synonymous with (and subsequently, to her credit distanced herself from) a particularly expensive style of Hermes handbag, Jane Birkin was, like Holiday, one of the original girls with flowers in her hair. Unlike Holiday however, Birkin typified the swinging side of the sixties - all transcendent idealism and decadent downfalls. Making her film debut in the iconic counterculture movie Blow Up, the flowers that adorned Birkin’s hair seemed the perfect symbol of fragile freedoms that defined the era.
John And Yoko Bed-In
![1 Floom Magazine Iconic Images John And Yoko Bed 1](https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_iconic_images_john_and_yoko_bed_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=1440&s=3b72b806890eedd1afd6e3ed382105da 1440w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_iconic_images_john_and_yoko_bed_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=1000&s=edf9a2f7c3d22ab82236ed0cb7a9f5ec 1000w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_iconic_images_john_and_yoko_bed_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=600&s=efaec29fa44b2f66c8de857c35e90509 600w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_iconic_images_john_and_yoko_bed_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=400&s=b96a689d7b09b9be577fbe1d845962f7 400w)
Sticking with the hippie era, is there any image more iconic of that generation’s ideals than John and Yoko sitting in a bed together, draped in white and surrounded by masses of flowers? Realising their wedding would draw huge amounts of press attention, the couple decided to turn their honeymoon into two week-long ‘bed-ins’ - an extension of the sit-in as a form of non-violent protest, to which the world’s entire press were invited. Readily they came too, with many apparently thinking they would be watching John and Yoko having sex (this was in the aftermath of their Two Virgins album cover, which featured the pair completely naked and caused controversy amongst the more uptight members of society).
Instead, they found, as John (modestly) put it: “two angels in bed, with flowers all around us, with peace and love in our heads.”
Charlie Chaplin in City Lights
![1 Floom Magazine Iconic Images Charlie Chaplin City Lights 1](https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_iconic_images_charlie_chaplin_city_lights_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=1440&s=9fe5b5836aab06605185ff31c1ec4a33 1440w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_iconic_images_charlie_chaplin_city_lights_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=1000&s=a014088476eecbfbb903a9c047eab783 1000w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_iconic_images_charlie_chaplin_city_lights_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=600&s=896ff6456df7626a487527d05fdc62d9 600w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_iconic_images_charlie_chaplin_city_lights_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=400&s=8e3874ec2e18135d6124e54ff338cde1 400w)
This is cheating a bit because it’s actually a film still rather than a straight photographic image - but what an image it makes, Chaplin’s hapless tramp down in the gutter yet cradling a fragile flower for all it’s worth. The moment comes towards the end of City Lights, which contains one of the greatest, most moving endings to any movie and is, to an old romantic like me, quite possibly the silent comic’s finest accomplishment.
The movie came out in 1931, a silent movie in a time when talkies were already the dominant force in American cinema. Its farcical tale of a downtrodden tramp who falls for a beautiful, blind flower girl struck a chord though with depression-era viewers and it became a huge commercial and critical success (after a turbulent initial period in which Chaplin had to put up his own personal money to fund the advertising). It’s difficult to capture the magic of this picture without spoiling the movie, but the flowers (along with a score that draws on composer Jose Padilla’s La Violetera) lend a poignant, delicate beauty to the black and white, dialogue-free images on the screen.
Photo Credits:
Tilda Swinton - shot by Tim Walker for W Magazine
Jane Birkin - from Vogues Magazine online