In 2011, Judith Jockel lost Mieke, her closest friend and studio-mate, with whom she had shared a garden in Amsterdam Oost. Jockel’s response was photographic, but the camera she used carries its own history: Mieke’s analogue Cambo 8×10-inch camera, kept in use despite a technical malfunction that lets in an uncontrollable amount of light through tiny holes. Jockel photographed the flowers in their shared garden with it. The resulting pictures show the flowers, but the light flares on the negative also make the camera present, so each image records both the subject before the lens and the flawed apparatus through which it was seen.

Raymond Frenken contributes the accompanying text, and Hans Gremmen designed the book. At 144 pages and roughly 21 by 26 centimetres, the volume is printed at the exact dimensions of the 8×10-inch negatives, so the scale of the original sheet film is preserved on the page. The camera’s accidental light flares become part of the colour printing rather than an error to be corrected.

Published by Fw:Books, the book treats grief through a fixed method: the same malfunctioning camera, the same flowers, one sheet at a time. Its subject is specific, a friendship and a garden, and its printing size, camera defect, and sequence of plates are inseparable from that subject. The connection between a shared place and a shared instrument gives the work its particular intimacy. The flowers remain recognizable, while the unpredictable light prevents their pictures from becoming a straightforward botanical inventory.