HOSTA (PROTOTYPE VERSION)

Alyssa Warren
HOSTA (PROTOTYPE VERSION)

Photographs: Alyssa Warren

Publisher: Self published

Pictures: 54

Year: 2024

Comments: Softcover double-sided concertina with wire slipcase, 21 x 15,3 cm. Editing by Alyssa Warren, Ilias Georgiadis, Tomasz Laczny. Design by Alyssa Warren, Damaso Matheus. Signed and dated. PROTOTYPE VERSION BEFORE AN EDITION.

One day, my aunt went into her garden, and angered by the nighttime raids of deer, placed a cage around her favourite hosta plant. The hosta grew thick and lush until its leaves curled around themselves and blocked the sunlight.

HOSTA (2024) is the study of a caged hosta, the cage serving not only as a subject of the work, but the structure holding the apparatus with which its long-exposure, pin- hole photographs were taken. Shot in extreme close-up, the hosta’s botanical forms invite comparisons with the human body, exploring the borderline between protec- tion and endangerment, intimacy and intrusivenss, trust and parnoia, self and other. The images in HOSTA were shot directly onto paper with a variety of handmade pinhole cameras and printed in a darkroom using hand-applied liquid photographic emulsion.