Root Bound

Artist Francis Baker is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the project ‘Everyday Garden’. To see Francis’s body of work, click on any image.

The everyday garden began after I salvaged a discarded houseplant left on the side of the road. It was not much more than a cage of roots and the stalk, devoid of anything green or even dirt. I began doing more photographic studies of my neglected and root bound houseplants. During this process I became fascinated by the root structures. I have always been heavily influenced by metaphysics. Almost immediately I saw the root bound plants as a metaphor for existence and used this project as a tool to facilitate personal sovereignty.

I began casting everyday objects I saw as representing fundamental desires or notions. I utilize this negative as a container into which to grow a plant, then record its life and ultimate suffocation under the conditions of being root bound. The series as a whole was an action taking about 5 years.