Transition, Ricky Workman, 2025, photography, 16 x 24 in. / 40.64 x 60.96 cm.

Golden Stillness: The Photography of Ricky Workman

September 12, 2025 Gavin Coates

Featured image: Transition, Ricky Workman, 2025, photography, 16 x 24 in. / 40.64 x 60.96 cm.

Ricky Workman’s photographic practice captures the fragile beauty of transformation in nature.

Ricky Workman captures fragile beauty in nature, transforming withered forms into meditations on resilience, memory, and the quiet radiance of time.

His images of withering lily pads are not portraits of decline, but meditations on resilience, memory, and the quiet radiance that emerges as life shifts into its later stages. By isolating these forms against subdued backgrounds, Workman allows the viewer to linger on texture, shadow, and light, qualities that evoke presence long after vibrancy has faded.

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Golden Companions, Ricky Workman, 2025, photography, 20 x 16 in. / 50.8 x 40.64 cm.

Golden Companions presents a cluster of aging lily pads bending toward one another, their curled edges like whispered gestures in the wind. Though each stem carries its own weight and character, the composition emphasizes their interdependence. The golden tones glow warmly against the dark backdrop, suggesting that even in fragility, there is harmony and shared endurance. The piece reads as an allegory of human connection, where closeness carries us through cycles of change.

A Muted Shine, Ricky Workman, 2025, photography, 18 x 18 in. / 45.72 x 45.72 cm.

In A Muted Shine, Workman shifts toward a singular focus, capturing one leaf with extraordinary detail. Its half-golden, half-browned surface reveals the passage of time as layered beauty rather than loss. The play of soft light across its veins and folds imbues the form with quiet dignity. Unlike the exuberance of a flower in bloom, this muted radiance insists on subtler virtues, grace, patience, and endurance. The result is an image that hums with contemplative calm.

Standing Alone, Ricky Workman, 2025, photography, 12 x 18 in. / 30.48 x 45.72 cm.

Standing Alone captures the poignancy of solitude. A single lily pad, set apart from its surroundings, bends gently forward as if acknowledging the weight of time. Yet it remains upright, rooted in quiet persistence. The image suggests resilience in isolation, where strength is not loud but quietly steadfast. In its simple framing, the work becomes a meditation on presence, how we hold ourselves even when apart.

Workman’s photographs are less about decay than about the persistence of form, memory, and meaning. Through his lens, dying leaves glow with life, reminding us that beauty persists in every stage of being. By focusing on what is often overlooked, his work slows us into a deeper kind of seeing, where fragility becomes a language of endurance.

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