Lomographic Color Studies: Violet

Surprisingly, the color violet is one of the oldest colors known to man, thus explaining dark violets and mauves found in antique artifacts and drawings on the cave walls, mixed with manganese, water or animal fat. It can be found both in flora and vegetation -- eggplants, grapes, plums, mulberries, orchids, thistles, lilacs, and violets.

The violet dye was a favorite among royals and people higher rank, while worn less frequently by kings and princes, they were also the color of the intellectuals.and scholars of medieval universities. While the status of the color is prestige, it is one of the least favorite colors, for unknown reasons. We do think that violet deserves more love, however.

If things of further distance turn blue, things that appear far in the midst of sunset and sunrise turn purple; evidence of this beauty is the peaks found in Colorado Springs, inspiring lyricist Katharine Lee Bates to write the poem that goes 'for amber waves of grain, for purple mountain majesties, above the enameled plain!'.

A fine example of purple prose on dawn and twilight, the ambiguous parts of the day that mimic the obscurity of violet; like the Chesire Cat keeping Wonderland's secrets hidden in plain sight.

Most of all, what makes violet such a grand color is it is a dignified color of pride and individuality. It's why women of ranking love their amethyst necklaces, painters and their inclination for violet pigment over black,, the wise elderly and their affinity for the aroma of lavender, the LGBTQ in their sometimes-rainbow and sometimes-solid mulberry shirts, priests and their purple stoles, the dark plum sashes found in royal paintings of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II, and let's not forget Prince, who might as well own the color for himself.

There's a reason why it's a favorite for the proud individual of authority. In dire need of self-love and confidence? You can never go wrong with violet.

2017-08-11 #cultura #violet #color-photography #lomographic-color-studies