ashleymaclean – Avocado (2007)

Confession: in a week I eat probably a half dozen avocados–chunks of them in salad, guacamole in burritos; hell, I regularly halve them and spoon them out into my face the way most people eat that Greek yogurt stuff.

But it’s never occurred to me until I saw this that the color of a ripe avocado is extremely close to my all-time favorite color–which I call acid green but is sometimes termed pistachio. Or, an even more apt example: the green of the absinthe in Mark Romanek’s video for nine inch nails The Perfect Drug.

(As an aside it occurs to me that we stop asking certain questions of people beyond a certain age, i.e. what’s your favorite color? what’s your favorite animal? Why do we do this? Such questions are so much more informative and revealing of the quality and nature of inner life than small talk about how we pay our bills or commentary on the fucking weather.)

So beyond the fact that like black, avocado/pistachio/acid green compliments other loud colors well.

But this is an interesting photo for more than just the use of color. It’s a killer example of logic that justifies vertical orientation. (And unlike most cases where I merely refer to the compositional logic without showing my work–so to speak–I can explain myself in this case.

We’re dealing with a frame within a frame here. Actually, it’s a frame within a frame within a frame… but let’s keep it simple: there’s the frame and then the door into the dark hallway is a second frame. Note how the balance of the frame leans to the left and how that pattern is reiterated in the relationship between positive and negative space w/r/t the dark hallway vs. the light falling from the window in the far room.

Was MacLean thinking about that repeated form when triggering the shutter? There’s no telling. It’s possible.

But it doesn’t really matter whether it was instinctive or intentional. The logic is there–plain as day. This image would not have worked any other way.