Thalis

Robert Mapplethorpe said, “I am obsessed with beauty. I want everything to be perfect, and of course it isn’t. And that’s a tough place to be because you’re never satisfied.” I share his obsession—and his frustration. Thalis is an act of restraint: a meditation on simplicity, silence, and the pursuit of perfection. Where Anthos embraced baroque abundance, Thalis pares everything back. One subject. One gesture. The tulip: a symbol of love, affection, renewal, and transience. The flowers in Mapplethorpe’s photographs—stark, sensual, poised—were real, of course. His blooms existed. Mine do not. Or perhaps they do, in some other dimension, just beyond reach. They can be whatever you want them to be.

Photography was once dismissed—mechanical, unemotional, not truly art. But time reshapes perception. The lens became a tool of vision, of authorship, of truth. Today, we stand at the birth of another medium: synthography—images made not with pigment or light, but with code, precision, and linguistic control. Thalis is not generative chaos. It is something more measured. More rational. A conversation between mind and machine. Mapplethorpe had his camera and darkroom. I have prompts, processors, and probability engines. Yet the desire remains the same: to hold time still. To make beauty from silence. I’ve drawn from wabi-sabi and the still-life tradition—vanitas, memento mori—not as decoration, but as philosophy. A reminder that even simulated flowers can wither in the mind. There’s beauty in decay, and beauty in simplicity. These works are not afraid of either.

These images are not posts. They are not content. They do not belong on social media timelines. They belong on walls—in rooms made still by the weight of looking. If Mapplethorpe had access to generative AI, he wouldn’t be cautious. He wouldn’t be sentimental. He’d push it to the edge. He’d make it bleed silver. He’d ask: Can a flower wound you? Can a shadow seduce? I’ve asked those same questions. And now I want these images to become physical—archival, exacting, and real. Ultra-HD photo prints on aluminium dibond. Ilford baryta paper for the black-and-white works. Some large, some small. Always precise. Always personal.