Joanna Szpak Ostachowska

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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. 

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. 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.

Photos: Joanna Szpak – Ostachowska

Selection of archival materials: Joanna Szpak – Ostachowska

Graphic design: Olga Łacna

Photo editing: Olga Łacna, Joanna Szpak  – Ostachowska, Joanna Kinowska

Translation: Agata Jasińska

Color proofing and prepress: Tomasz Kubaczyk

Proofreading in Polish: Dominik Wódź

Proofreading in English: Piotr Tyczyński

Pages: 144

Number of photographs: 71

Pictures and quatations: 15

Dimensions: 200×260 mm

Paper: Wibalin (okładka / cover), Garda Kiara Pat, Gloss, Ibo

Cover: hard, canvas spine

Printing and bindings: Argraf, Warsaw, Poland

Print run : 600 – 400 PL, 200 EN

ISBN: 978-83-974724-0-2

First edition

Copyright: Joanna Szpak – Ostachowska

Warszawa 2025

Special thanks to Joanna Tyczyńska, Weronika Kobylińska i Agnieszka Rayss.