Where Flowers Bloom

Flowers are both perennial and transient; we get to enjoy a single bloom for only a short time, but trust that there will always be more in the future. Photography, by contrast, is the art and the science of capturing whatever is impermanent around us and transforming it in to something longer-lived, for our pleasure or, at least, our inspection. "Where Flowers Bloom" grew out of the catalogue for a temporary exhibition I produced, so is my own attempt to produce something more permanent from something fleeting. This book went through many incarnations before reaching its present form and, whilst working on it, I was reading a number of Zen Buddhist texts for another project, which partly explains some of the Buddhist and oriental influences on this book. I very much like the traditional Japanese cultural and artistic preoccupation with the natural world and with the passing seasons, so that was another influence. My hope is that this book will offer its readers a calming and uplifting experience, or at least a reminder of the pleasures of the natural world around us.