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Flowers for Bea - Special Edition

Flowers for Bea - Special Edition

by Brendan Barry

$335.00
$335.00
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Flowers for Bea is a book of still life photographs of wildflowers collected close to artist Brendan Barry’s home in Devon. The images were created in a camera obscura—a room sized camera, operated from the inside—using two distinct analogue processes. The creation of each photograph involved a painstaking process of alchemy and patience with a successful exposure sometimes taking up to 8 hours. 

A video showing Barry’s process can be viewed here.

More about this book

The photographs were made during the spring, summer and early autumn of 2020. Each day during the Covid lockdowns, Barry would go for a walk with his daughter around their neighbourhood. They began a tradition of picking wildflowers—California poppy, cow parsley, cornflower, Queen Anne’s lace, hogweed, field scabious, dove’s foot crane’s bill, meadow buttercup—bringing them home to arrange in vases to be photographed.

‘This work is, at its heart, about family. The daily walks with my pregnant partner and daughter, the quiet ritual of gathering and arranging flowers together, became a shared act of noticing and creating amidst the uncertainty. Though the photographs speak to process and transformation, they are also rooted in the intimacy of those shared days, evidence of a bond strengthened through curiosity, collaboration and care.’

Barry initially constructed a camera obscura and darkroom out of his garden shed, then when Covid 19 restrictions lifted he set up a studio in a disused gym in town. Some of the images were created by producing a simple paper negative, others using a complex colour reversal process he pioneered. All of the images were captured directly onto photo sensitive chromogenic paper to create the final large-scale works. During these processes, as the ambient temperature in the room shifted and the chemical concentration changed, the colour balance and exposure values would fluctuate influencing the resulting image—making each precariously unique and impossible to replicate.

‘These are representations of flowers, of course, but they are also signs of complex improvisations with chemicals, paper, light, and time. I do not know what the image is going to be like at the start of the process: each one is a small revelation. Sometimes the strangeness of the result positions the everyday motif of the flower within a new hybrid space between the chemical and natural: a fusion of the tradition of art that celebrates the transience of flowers, and a process that steals them away into an uncanny, chromatic image of an apparently permanent and artificial afterlife.’

A video showing Barry’s process can be viewed here

About special editions

Please note, Special Editions are not processed through our warehouse but individually condition checked and packaged by hand to avoid any damage. As a result, please allow extra time for your Special Edition to arrive. We will keep you updated on the progress of your order and we can be contacted on orders@gostbooks.com with any queries.

Published December 2025
292 x 350 mm
88pp, 48 images
Hardback
ISBN 978-1-80598-008-7

Signed book and a 11x14" c type print in a case folder, numbered and signed by Brendan Barry

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In the press

From the author

  • Brendan Barry is a photographer, educator and camera builder whose creative photographic practice combines elements of construction, education, performance and participation. He is founder and director of Positive Light Projects, a not for profit organisation using the visual arts to engage and inspire. Major collaborative projects and commissions include the ‘Skyscaper Camera Project’, New York (2019); ‘Lund Point’ exhibition, V&A London (2021) and ‘Regent’s Park Portrait’, part of The Regent’s Park Estate Story Trail, a permanent public art installation in Camden, London (2024). Works from 'Flowers for Bea' have been widely exhibited at venues including Saatchi Gallery, London and Centre Photographique Rouen Normandie, and are included in the book 'Flora Photographica - The Flower in Contemporary Photography' (Thames & Hudson). Barry is represented by Black Box Projects.

  • ‘These are representations of flowers, of course, but they are also signs of complex improvisations with chemicals, paper, light, and time. I do not know what the image is going to be like at the start of the process: each one is a small revelation. Sometimes the strangeness of the result positions the everyday motif of the flower within a new hybrid space between the chemical and natural: a fusion of the tradition of art that celebrates the transience of flowers, and a process that steals them away into an uncanny, chromatic image of an apparently permanent and artificial afterlife.’

    - Brendan Barry