Giant Kelp

In Carmel, a coastal town in Northern California, there are winter storms that dislodge the giant kelp plants from the rocks.  By morning, many tangled bundles of kelp are found washed up on the beach, just like dead bodies.  The appearance of these kelp "bodies" is very striking, and truly the dreamstuff of photographic reverie, nothing other than giant kelp forest art.

If you are ever so lucky enough to encounter giant swaths of beached kelp, then your immediate response should be to approach them, and hopefully photograph them, but as a minumum, to check them out very carefully. The best time to find them is at daybreak, when the tide is receding and the bodies haven't been dried out by the sun.  At these moments, the kelp is still moist and retains all of its glistening colors. 

I had encountered these kelp bodies only days after having some conversations with Mattias Forshage speculating on the likelihood of an emergence of an insectoid civilization versus that of a cephalopod society.  When you look in the mirror, do you see an octopus, or do you see a roach?

These sorts of abstract, strictly hypothetical considerations influenced the way in which I apprehended these masses of dislodged kelp forest, in their photographing and subsequent poetic interpretation.  A hovel for the bedbugs of Z'ha'dum, or the winter retreat of Vorlons?  My personal opinion is that these images are the footprints of Cthulu, but anyone can draw their own conclusions.

I consider these to be examples of the "surrealist found object" in the sense that there are images to be discovered within these useless bundles of sleeping infinity that release the imagination, that engage the viewer's mental faculties in an interpretive delirium.