Like clockwork pumpkins beckon the photographer at the start of fall, just like sunflowers did in August and September. Like clockwork, the photographer tries to find new angles, opting for detail in some years,

the whole Gestalt in others.

Pumpkins provide never ending joy in their voluptuousness, their variability ranging from highly saturated colors

to visions of water color softness.

I am currently working on a longer essay about the new artist in residence at Portland Japanese Garden, who displays installations based on a theme of visual transposition, mitate ((見立絵)) in Japanese. It is a form of literary or visual reconfiguration, seeing something old in new ways, or making allusions that can amount to puns or parody.

Mitate is of course at the core of creating photomontages – transposing the old into the new, shaping reality into something that both maintains and shifts appearances, and, at times, meaning. For today’s topic I have the perfect examples (I have posted some of these images before, long-time readers, please be forgiving.) Here are reconfigured pumpkins. Don’t dare to carve them!

Here is some funky jazz from Poitiers, France: Light up my Pumpkin

Go make me some pumpkin bread! Just kidding.