A seed is a small thing that most photographs pass over. Paul Starosta does the reverse: he meets it at close range until it fills the frame, and what emerges is an object with an architecture — ridges, seams, husks, a colour that seems chosen rather than grown. SEEDS gathers these close studies, including remarkably small specimens. Some read as flowers, some as stones or carved figures; others suggest jewellery from an imaginary workshop. Light and shadow do most of the persuading.

The specimens come from two botanical collections in France: those of Jean Laty, and those of the La Voie des Fleurs society in Draveil. Michel Butor, the French novelist and essayist associated with the Nouveau Roman, contributes a text. At the back, the plates are reproduced at miniature scale and paired with scientific notes on how seeds live, what distinguishes them, and which families they belong to. The book therefore asks to be read twice, once for pleasure and once for information.

Starosta is a biologist as well as a photographer, and that dual training shows in the patience of the looking. He has published widely on plants and animals, and in 2010 he was the subject of an issue of Photo Poche, the pocket series founded by Robert Delpire.

For a collector, the interest lies in the conjunction. The book is a hardback of 240 pages in a 24 × 24 cm square format, issued in 2025 by 5 Continents Editions, whose catalogue includes photography. What it offers is not documentation alone but a demonstration: that the smallest structures in a garden can carry the weight of an entire visual argument, and that beauty is often where accuracy and invention meet.