Chloe Sells made the images in Flamingo from photographs taken in the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans in Botswana, one of the largest breeding grounds for flamingos in the Southern Hemisphere. The book is her second monograph, published by GOST Books. Rather than straightforward wildlife records, the source images are adapted and reworked, presenting the flamingos and their saline habitat through an intervening process.

The book’s physical character is notable. It is a hardback with a silk-screened cover, issued in six cover colors. GOST Books notes that when ordering, a cover will be allocated at random, so copies vary in their exterior appearance while the interior remains consistent. The volume runs to 72 pages and was published in 2017.

Sells is the sole credited photographer for the project. The images engage with the landscape of the salt pans as much as with the birds themselves, with the source photographs serving as the starting point for a process of adaptation into the book’s final form. The publication reflects GOST Books’s continued engagement with photography as a primary medium.

Flamingo is a compact, carefully considered volume by an artist using photography to think about habitat, reproduction, and the distance between a place and its picture.