Through the Leaves

I had already begun looking around the balcony for things to photograph.

There was nowhere I needed to go.

The idea was simply to see what I could find without leaving home.

Unlike the white flowers I isolated against a darker background, this red flower remained surrounded by everything that was part of the balcony.

Leaves crossed in front of me.

Plants overlapped one another.

The wooden railing caught the afternoon sunlight.

And somewhere within all of it was this small burst of red.

I didn't want to remove the surroundings from the photograph.

They were part of what made me notice the flower.

I was looking through the leaves.

The obstruction became part of the composition.

What might normally have been something to photograph around became part of the reason to make the photograph at all.

Through the Leaves is constructed through layers rather than isolation.

A red flowering plant appears within dense vegetation, framed by palm leaves, broad green foliage, and the warm vertical and horizontal forms of a wooden balcony railing.

The foreground does not provide an unobstructed view.

Instead, leaves cross the frame and partially interrupt the scene, producing a sense of looking into a private garden environment rather than encountering a formally arranged botanical subject.

The red blossoms provide the principal point of visual attention, while the surrounding greens and warm wood establish depth and place.

The railing introduces a strong geometric counterpoint to the organic forms of the vegetation.

Rather than eliminating visual complexity, Colón uses it to create the experience of discovery.

The viewer does not simply see the flower.

The viewer finds it.

Sometimes the things between us and the subject are not really in the way.

They are part of the experience of seeing it.

The leaves crossed the frame.

The balcony was crowded with plants.

The railing divided the space.

I could have tried to find a cleaner view.

But then it would have become a different photograph.

What interested me was finding that small red flower within everything surrounding it.

The balcony didn't need to be simplified.

I needed to look through it.

That is what this photograph preserves for me—not simply a flower, but the moment when everything around it became part of seeing it.

Preserved as the seventy-ninth accessioned photograph in the Francisco Colón Studio Photography Wing, Through the Leaves joins the Nature collection as an environmental study of observation, layering, and everyday discovery.

The photograph was made from the balcony of the artist's apartment in Mexico City on June 2, 2018.

The central flowering plant is believed to be a red-flowering Pelargonium, commonly known as a geranium. The exact botanical identification and cultivar remain unconfirmed.

Unlike the more isolated composition of Because I Looked, made during the same balcony study, Through the Leaves retains the visual density of its environment.

Foreground vegetation crosses the frame while the red blossoms emerge against a sunlit wooden railing. The interaction between foliage, flower, architecture, and sunlight establishes the balcony itself as part of the subject.

During the 2026 restoration, strong highlights throughout the scene were moderated while preserving the character of direct afternoon sunlight. Local adjustments were used to retain structure within the intensely illuminated red petals and reduce competition from a bright foreground leaf.

The wooden railing, overlapping foliage, foreground obstructions, and naturally occurring highlights were retained as documentary elements of the original scene.

No environmental elements were removed or reconstructed.

Within the Studio archive, Through the Leaves and Because I Looked preserve two different ways of seeing the same familiar environment: one through isolation and the other through immersion.