Big Island Bougainvillea

• Archival print on rag paper

“Big Island Bougainvillea” is a quietly jubilant photograph that finds extraordinary color in an unlikely place — a sprawling bougainvillea in full, exuberant bloom growing from the volcanic rock shoulder of a highway on Hawaii's Big Island. The vivid coral-pink of the blossoms explodes against a wide, clear blue sky, while the dark lava field and dry grasses at its base ground the image in the rugged, elemental landscape of the island. Fitts frames the scene with the eye of a storyteller — the empty road receding into the distance on the left, the vast open terrain stretching to distant mountains, the lone flowering shrub holding its own against all of it. It is a photograph about resilience and surprise, beauty insisting on itself in the most unadorned of settings.