There’s something happening here.
What it is, according to Buffalo Springfield, ain’t exactly clear.

Buffalo Springfield has never lied to me. Their 1967 rock protest anthem, For What It’s Worth, seems an appropriate tool for understanding this photograph. It’s a deceptively simple song, just as this is a deceptively simple photo. The words of the song’s title don’t appear in the lyrics; the title is offered as a sort of comment on the issues raised in the song. Those issues aren’t identified or explained either, which makes the song universal. The specific issues aren’t relevant. The song exists to tell its listeners to pay attention, to stop and listen, to figure out what’s going down.

This photograph serves a similar function, though on a different level. A dandelion and a mound of fiddlehead ferns piled in a corner—it’s visually compelling, but what does it mean? The title of the photograph doesn’t tell the viewer anything. The subject matter itself is curious at the least, and leans toward the semi-hallucinatory. What possible reason could any rational person have for piling ferns and a dandelion in a corner?

The answer is simple: it doesn’t matter. The specific subject matter is irrelevant. It’s not tied to any thing or any place, which makes the photograph universal. What matters is that the viewer stops, pays attention, asks questions, and wonders. Wonders and looks, and looks again. It isn’t about the fiddlehead ferns; it isn’t about the dandelion. It’s about the looking.

Everybody look what’s going down.