Les dahlias began with Nolwenn Brod’s photographic residency in Chartres and was published by Sur La Crête éditions in 2023. Its title establishes a deliberately narrow field: the dahlia is not one subject among many but the organizing motif of the book. The project thus brings a site-based period of work into the concentrated form of a photographic publication.

The approach is defined by sustained attention. By returning to a single flower across a sequence, Brod turns limitation into a working method, allowing repetition, variation and the passage from one image to another to carry the book. The dahlia functions both as a recognizable botanical subject and as a formal structure through which photography can examine difference within apparent sameness.

Brod’s photographs are accompanied by a text by Marcelline Delbecq, introducing a second authorial register without displacing the photographic core. The French-language paperback is housed in a printed card folder and bound with three-point Singer stitching. These documented design decisions give the publication a materially specific identity: the binding and enclosure belong to the editorial conception rather than serving as neutral packaging.

For a photobook collection, Les dahlias merits attention as a compact example of how a residency can be resolved through subject, sequence, writing and construction. Its significance does not depend on expansive documentary claims. Instead, it lies in the disciplined conversion of a bounded motif into book form, and in the collaboration between photographer, writer and independent publisher. Collectors interested in contemporary French photographic publishing, single-subject studies and publications shaped by place will find a clearly defined work whose conceptual and physical elements remain closely connected.