Creature Feature was a television series of back-to-back movies popular in the 1970s/80s that was broadcast nationwide and here in Detroit on UHF WKBD Channel 50. (How many of you remember UHF dials on the TV? 🙂 ) I spent a lot of time watching that particular Saturday afternoon matinee growing up. My favorites were undoubtedly the whole genre of Japanese monster movies originating from the very first Godzilla movie in 1954. Likely I saw the Americanized version that was made 2 years later in 1956 – still capturing the attention of kids in the 1970s. A genre still popular today as shown by the success of Godzilla vs. Kong in 2021.

It may have been my first introduction to the concept of you mess with nature – it messes back with you. The actual metaphors of the consequences of nuclear weapons and geopolitics in these films are a bit too heavy for a kid, especially when you find out that Godzilla’s skin was modeled after the keloid scarring of atomic bomb victims in Japan.

I developed an affinity towards these giant imaginary creatures at a pretty young age, which the Japanese labeled as kaiju meaning “strange beast.” And despite the destruction occurring as they stomped around cities, they still had sympathetic voices in these films (usually from scientists) acknowledging that humans were simply reaping what they sowed.

A Matter of Scale

It is maddening at times to see so many people not face the immediate consequences of their hostile or careless actions towards nature. However, I often have to remind myself it is a frustration of a human about other humans within the relatively insignificant timescale of human life versus the age of this planet and universe itself. There ARE indeed consequences of such actions – just perhaps not on the scale we can tangibly realize until it is so large it begins to stomp on our daily life (or the lives of others).

So I appreciate now the creativity of the filmmakers used in Kaiju films to amplify these threats, manifestations of fear and destruction in these larger-than-life metaphors. Thinking about scale is preached a lot in photography. It is harder to do with symbolism and abstract concepts, and obviously, some filmmakers have addressed that by creating “giant” metaphorical creatures stomping through miniature cities serving dual purposes of entertainment and relaying a serious message.

Leaf Kaiju?

What does any of this have to do with leaves? After doing quite a few of these leaf creatures for this project, I started to think about this aspect of scale and how it relates to this series of images. The way I chose to portray them is absent of it intentionally because I try to leave it open to interpretation by the viewer. However, knowing it is a leaf immediately creates this predetermined “prison” of scale in our minds. It is actually quite difficult to separate that without visually forcing it – even for me.

With the openness of a child’s mind and willingness to play, imagining them to be city-stomping monsters is probably easier. The walls of reality seem to close in on us as we get older, requiring a visual sledgehammer at times to try to shatter them.

I don’t have a specific narrative in mind that would accommodate such leaf creatures in being so large other than the enormous benefits they provide to us. Leaves do a great deal for our planet of course. Individuals may be easily dismissed as insignificant but as a collective whole, essential to the survival of life as we know it on this planet. Recognition of individuals is simply a step in acknowledging connections to the larger systems existing around us.

All of this started flowing in my head in working on this particular Leaf Creature No. 11. For one, it is the only creature in the series that is better suited to a vertical format, placing more visual emphasis on height. Second, I think the resemblances to Godzilla-like form are obvious. That is probably a function of my love for the film characters.

Whether anyone else would arrive at that interpretation (especially without the visual nudge I placed 🙂 ) is a good question. I have no intention to force such an interpretation with any others, only to suggest thinking about our constraints of thought.

Forget the name, not the value

“To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at.”

~ Monet

I believe much of the message in forgetting what you are looking at and seeing things in different ways are attempts to get us back to the freedom of thought that comes more easily as kids. Age has a way of hardening our perceptions and perhaps not spending enough time thinking about consequences and larger connections. Filmmakers make exaggerations to force us to consider such things. While forgetting the name may free our minds to explore other possibilities when it comes to making art, we must always be wary of forgetting the value of the small things around us. For me, recognizing the value makes so many things much larger than their apparent size.