Photos of Flowers Frozen in Ice Blocks by Kenji Shibata

By freezing beautiful and colorful flowers into large blocks of ice, Japanese artist Kenji Shibata has created a subject for his photos that is both strikingly beautiful and poignantly symbolic. His “Locked in the Ether” photo series features flowers literally frozen in time, cut down and preserved in ice to both save and destroy their beauty.

The ice keeping Shibata’s flowers captive gives them the appearance of a watercolor painting. Some, however, have started thawing out of the ice, creating a contrast between the frozen beauties within and the rapidly wilting dead flowers outside of the ice.

Shibata is the author of an unusual series of photographs of flowers inside blocks of ice called Locked in the Ether.

Kenji Shibata froze flowers in blocks of ice, then gradually thawed them. And once the petals became clearly visible, the author took pictures of them. As a result we have a peculiar interpretation of the eternal living beauty.