Eat Flowers

“Eat Flowers” is an award-winning, contemporary florilegium in thirteen photographs of flowers, tipped-in jewel-toned original C-prints, accompanied by textual vignettes that explore “what it is to feel through the language of flowers.” The thoughtful attention to the book’s design, photographer Cig Harvey’s luminous imagery and intimate prose, plus the powerful collaboration of an all-women’s team propels Eat Flowers into a realm above and beyond photo book.

Bowdoin College Library’s director of Special Collections & Archives Kat Stekfo contextualizes Harvey’s work within centuries of the practice of capturing plants and their healing properties—medicinal and literary.

Designer Anneli Skaar engages Brazilian designer Ana Megda’s historical influenced type Luistana and embeds surprising and onomatopoeic twists to the text shape within Harvey’s witty and emotional writing.

The presswork was done by Leslie Miller, who founded New York’s Grenfell Press in 1979. The Grenfall Press prints and publishes artist’s books and limited edition prints, with a specialty in woodcut, linocut, and pochoir, as well as letterpress printing.

Claudia Cohen’s paste papers further amplify the color, movement, and density of Harvey’s prints; the book is issued in a green silk clamshell box with red and green paper spine label and gold stamped lettering.