One day my aunt walked into her garden and placed a cage around her favourite hosta plant. As the summers came and went, the hosta grew thick and lush, until its leaves, curling around themselves, pressed against the cage’s wire walls, blocking the light.

Containing 54 giclée plates, Hosta is a cross between a book, a sculpture and a box set of prints. Shot over the course of three years, Hosta is the photographic study of a caged plant, the cage serving both as a subject and element of process, providing the structure for the handmade pinhole cameras used to make long exposures of the plant within it. Shot in extreme close-up, the hosta’s botanical forms invite comparisons with the human body, evoking the biological interconnectedness between humans and nature and exploring the borderline between dualities such as protection and endangerment, intimacy and intrusiveness, trust and paranoia, self and other. Hosta, therefore, is a book conceived around concepts of enclosure, containment and interiority, the concertina form enabling it to be viewed standing in a circle, emulating a cage. The concertina is double-sided. One side displays positives, the other negatives, but they do not mirror each other - each side has a unique sequence selected from a separate body of images. Folded into a traditional book form, Hosta is encased in a wire cage featuring a hinged door fastened with a padlock. The first prototype of Hosta is currently on view in an exhibition of artist’s books at Le Plac’Art Photo, Paris, from October 9 - November 10, 2024.

HOSTA (2024)

Images Alyssa Warren
Editing Alyssa Warren, Ilias Georgiadis, Tomasz Laczny
Design Alyssa Warren, Damaso Matheus
Softcover double-sided concertina with locked wire slipcase

54 plates
Book 153 x 210 x 4000 mm
Cage155 x 230 x 60 mm
First prototype
Handmade

Signed and dated
SOLD