In 40 ROSES, David Sims shares a deeply personal body of work in which he returned to the primary school he attended as a child to photograph the wilting roses on its grounds. As Sims explained at the time, “The fragile and temporal qualities of flowers are well used as a visual metaphor for youth. But when I look at these roses close up and trace their own knocks and dents, I find a greater beauty and a complexity in their imperfections. The roses represent for me a very definite point in life and a state of mind.” The resulting images were bound in a book and arrived with a signed print from the photographer.
