In Full Bloom
Ishika Bhatia
Flowers, for me, extend beyond their presence in nature. They act as a language of emotion, memory, and expression. They are tied to moments of celebration, ritual, and everyday gestures. Each form and impression carries a feeling, often expressing what words cannot. Like these fleeting moments, flowers hold onto something that cannot fully stay. This perspective comes from personal experience. Watching my mother work with flowers, especially through paper floristry, has shaped how I observe, understand, and create. Her practice has quietly influenced my own.
In Full Bloom is an ode to this relationship. The book brings together a series of self-produced black and white photographs and cyanotype prints to explore a shared way of making between mother and daughter. This connection is not built through direct teaching, but through observation, presence, and time.
The process of creating this book became a way to understand my own practice. Black and white photography allows me to focus on light, texture, and gesture—on what remains when everything else is removed. Cyanotype introduces a slower, more intuitive process, shaped by material and chance. Using flowers as the subject, these prints exist between control and unpredictability, between something that can be held and something that is already fading.
Together, these images form a visual essay, an attempt to hold onto what is constantly shifting. The work reflects on the quiet ways creativity is passed down across generations, through process, memory, and shared experience.