Leggy hedges

I grabbed some time in my workroom the other afternoon to complete a simple accordion fold book form. The photos for this were taken in New Zealand 18 months ago, where such tall, leggy hedges are seen around fields all over the eastern side of South Island. I've found the lines and positive and negative shapes they create fascinating and they seem to respond particularly well to manipulation in black and white in Photoshop.

I used positive and inverted versions of this image, and printed them out to A3 size on photographic paper. The prints were folded and then placed back to back as a perpetual mirror image of themselves. Although there is stitching in this piece, it’s structural rather than decorative, holding the pages together in the valleys of the folds. A black cover was added at each end of the piece to make a positive full stop. 

The image seemed not to need embellishment. The only details I added were small burred holes to give texture to the areas of leaves. I’ve used this technique before many times and call it ‘blind' (or empty) stitches. These are made by poking a darning needle through into each image from the back. In the photographs, this treatment seems to show up more noticeably in the positive image where the holes were coming through into black, though on the computer screen, neither shows them well.

In reality, I think those in the inverted version are more interesting because they create delicate texture and small shadows on the white surface. 

I've just begun to explore stitch versions of these images ... lots to think about, not least, how to add meaningful stitches to an already very striking image.