Pass the Salt

Driving through the back roads of Perigord Vert you notice three crops growing beween the dark green forest that gives the region its name: wheat, maize and sunflowers. The first two are fairly ho-hum – patches of beige and dull green – but the sunflowers cut a cheerful swathe of yellow across the landscape. That’s providing the sun’s out and all’s well with the world; on a bad day, when the rain clouds gather or the autumn chill sets in, the same field can be a real downer. It may seems foolish to attribute human emotions to plants but sunflowers are a special case, you could almost say they’re bi-polar.

In France they’re called ‘tournesol’ on account of the way the young flowers turn their faces towards the sun, tracking their god across the sky from east to west as the day progresses. The older plants tend to fix themselves eastwards. I’ve photographed entire fields of them, their heads like flat plates on slim stalks all focused in the same direction, on target like thousands of synchronised periscopes. When it rains their heavy heads droop downwards in a group sulk. And then, when the sun comes out they look up, ever so slowly, until the whole field is a cheerful canvas of van Gough yellow.

Early in the season they look shiny and new but as the days grow shorter their petals fray and they dry up, turning a dullish colour like yellow paint that’s been contaminated with a dirty brush. It’s the saddest sight to see sunflowers like this, all gone to seed, waiting for the harvester to come and lop off their heads. And it all happens so quickly. Over night the fields are all stubble and there are only photographs to remind you of the youthful glow that once filled the gap between beige and dull green.