Six Vases
Six Vases is a story about grief and loss, told across six chapters – like six stages of mourning and six keepsakes left from a mother.
It is a narrative about fragility, pain, unease, and longing.
This book presents grief as an intense, strange, and ambiguous experience. It invites the viewer into an intimate world, full of cracks and fractures. Grief is not a predictable or linear process. It comes in waves, circles back, overlaps with daily life. Over time, it may lose its intensity, but it never disappears. It becomes part of the inner landscape, forever.
In this deeply personal journey, the artist was accompanied by flowers. Their life ends the moment they are picked; the time of admiring them is the time of their dying. Flowers – fragile, beautiful, and majestic – set the rhythm of the work. They led through blooming, fading, and care. They became continuous exercises in letting go.
The inspiration for the photographer was the Baroque painting of the Golden Age, especially the work of Rachel Ruysch – a master of still life and intimate stories of life and transience. She also finds affinity with the spiritual and ritual aspects of Japanese ikebana, whose simplicity and symbolism teach attentiveness and humility towards the cycles of nature. The Polish tradition of floristry also remains close to her heart, where flowers have long carried emotions, care, memory, and gestures of tenderness.
Six Vases brings together 71 photographs with archival prints and quotes from Polish floristry guides from the 1980s. Three types of paper emphasize both the fragility and dignity of the process of coming to terms with loss. The book’s handy format encourages intimate engagement with the images. The wrapping paper is traditional florist’s paper, allowing the book to symbolically become a bouquet.
Among the photographed flowers are: tulips, irises, lilacs, peonies, roses, dahlias, lilies, anthuriums, gerberas, asters, gladioli, hydrangeas, baby’s breath, and artificial flowers.
Six Vases is a threnody for my mother.
A thank you.
A farewell.
And a reminder of a love greater than death.
If you would like to buy the book, it is available HERE.
_ _ _ _ _
Read the review by Agnieszka Rayss – photographer, photo book author, mentor, co-founder of the Sputnik Photos collective:
“SIX VASES is a book that at first glance appears simple, but at second glance – unpredictable and dense with visual and emotional content. The author warns us that flowers in a vase are dying flowers and relentlessly leads us through this rich and intense process. Loss and death are universal themes, often taken up by artists, yet Joanna has managed to touch them in a surprising and fresh way.”
_ _ _ _ _
Read the review by Dr. Weronika Kobylińska – art historian, photography researcher, assistant professor at PWSFTviT, president of the Archeology of Photography Foundation:
“Art history has accustomed us to floral motifs. Is there still anything new to be said about them visually? Joanna Szpak-Ostachowska, in Six Vases, proves that yes, indeed, there is. Beyond being a visual feast, this publication is also a skillfully constructed narrative full of unease, melancholy, reflection, and emotion. From the simplicity of the motif, the artist draws out a moving emotional depth that surprises with its freshness and extraordinary sensitivity. The photographer speaks in her own sincere visual language, revealing anew what once seemed impossible to represent. I wish I could thank those dearest to me in such an authentic and devoted way.”
Jeżeli chcesz kupić książkę, jest dostępna TUTAJ