context

with a husband who’s a food writer, the subject of taste, and how it changes with context, comes up fairly frequently. i have an autoimmune syndrome that makes my mouth very dry and i’m sure as a result that i taste things differently from him, and from most others. how then do you decide what tastes “good” or “right” if everyone is tasting something different? this teasel is another example of the power of context. this was my first still blog subject, in france, against a white background, at a time when i was taking prospective test shots to decide whether this idea would even work. so even though i know wild teasel is an invasive pest in parts of california, i always see its prickly, arthropod shape as something to love like family, or like that ugly first dog with a snaggletooth underbite whom no dog since has ever really replaced.

wild teasel comb (dipsacus)