Wolfgang,
I like this concept. It's actually very important as part of our very fabric of thought and self-realization as a thinking living being, aware of mortaility. Perhaps this type of picture set could be set up for us a challenge to illustrate this, as it is, after all, a grand metaphor for life only second to the "Master Metaphor: "Life as a Journey".
Consider a rock songwriter, often make a brilliant composition or two at the age of 22 and then plays that song for the rest of his/her life, but it gets older. Nothing matches the blossom of youth!
Most novelists can actually produce only one good book. Then it is all gone from them!
That ability to blossom is obvious in the beauty of young women....but dont dare look at their mother's fat legs, blotchy face, odd wrinkles and thinning dyed hair.
Some. creatives continue their whole life, like Picasso or Albert Einstein, but that is rare!
The flower in bloom, that withers,
surely is part of the wonder and great
tragedy of life. Such limits, most of us ignore
and deny, right until, our canoe, captured by the
rapids, is jettisoned, over waterfall, to oblivion!
Asher