How They Might Live Amongst Flowers
A collaboration with Nerine Floral and Alyssa Suriano
It started with a bouquet.
My friend Rachel sent me an arrangement from Nerine Floral, and I couldn’t stop looking at it. Not at the flowers themselves, but at the intention behind them, the way they were composed, the way they leaned into each other, the way they seemed to have an emotional logic that went beyond decoration. I went to Nerine’s Instagram and stayed there for a long time.
I reached out to Liz, Nerine’s owner and lead designer, with an idea. I wanted to photograph people the way you might find them if flowers were part of their world, not as accessories, not as props, but as something they actually lived alongside. The question I kept asking myself was: what would it look like if a person and an arrangement truly belonged to each other?
Liz came to my studio with an armful of spring arrangements: poppies, alliums, ranunculus, delicate stems I didn’t know the names of but immediately understood. Alyssa, one of Chicago’s most compelling models, brought a beautiful flow to the work that made everything possible. The three of us moved through the afternoon together, in a flow-state.
Liz didn’t just place flowers, she negotiated with them. She’d hold a stem near Alyssa’s face, step back, consider, adjust. There was a conversation happening between the arrangement and the person that I was trying to capture with my camera.
The concept was simple but specific: the flowers shouldn’t feel placed. They should feel inhabited. I wanted images where you couldn’t quite tell whether Alyssa had grown up around these flowers or whether the flowers had grown toward her. The arrangements frame her face, obscure her expression, and rest against her skin.
Some of my favorite moments from the day didn’t make it into the final selects. The in-between cross-sections when Alyssa was waiting while Liz adjusted a stem, the two of them talking on the rug reminded me of why I make this kind of work. The photograph is the result, but the collaboration is the actual thing.
Credits
Photography: Khalid Ibrahim / Eat Pomegranate Photography
Floral Design: Liz Topp / Nerine Floral
Model: Alyssa Suriano / Select Model Management
Retouching: Anastasiia Antoniuk