WHO GAVE YOU THE ROSES?

I understood eating disorders especially anorexia and bulimia in depth from conversations with personal friends and family who controlled their life by it. The work was not to be about the physical body as that’s not what I wanted to unravel but the mind and relationship to it.Findings show that children as young as 8 have it and as old as old along with any gender, wage packet, or person.

Who gave you the Roses? is a book made in collaboration with a Beat Ambassador Francesca Carrington Birch in 2012. I met Francesca and I believe we hit it off well with honesty about my understanding of what she went through and hopefully trust as she shared her diary entries from the years before. This blew me away.

Water is a way of being able to change form without changing. I played with this concept illustrating and collaborating with Francesca making sure I didn’t miss the mark. Interestingly, both ending our journey in Cambodia where the final images were taken and where Francesca went after her recovery several years before.

When designing this book I wanted to have little secrets so using tracing paper, envelopes and Polaroids to achieve this intimacy. The text was difficult to read and this is why I decided on the text being in capital letters.