How We Made It: Forgotten Flowers

From concept to execution, Broccoli's founder Anja Charbonneau shares the story behind Forgotten Flowers: A Collection of Found Floral Photography.

The Idea

I have a long-term habit of collecting old photographs, whether I’m scouring eBay or flipping through piles at an antique shop. I used to buy large lots of old photos online, usually collections of a hundred or more, and sift through the bounty, pulling out favorites. What used to be a massive collection has been pared back into two forms: a small tin of my all-time forty favorite images, and an album that is half-scrapbook, half-photo album, that belonged to a teenage Kansas girl in the early 1940s.

Sifting through these photos, some commonalities appear: a sense of playfulness, an appreciation for nature, and many serene moments. A woman posing in the grass wearing a dress covered in starfish. A doe and two fawns sleeping in a sunlit grove. A portrait of a man sitting next to a framed drawing of a rabbit. A woman crouched on the sidewalk reaching her gloved hands out to pet a cat. Three friends embracing in a field of wildflowers. I’m always looking for a window into a moment in time—the feeling that the camera caught something real, something timeless.

Photographs from Anja's collection.

Forgotten Flowers was basically an excuse to rekindle this treasure-hunting hobby. We decided to gather a collection of found photographs featuring flowers. Flowers have always been part of Broccoli’s identity—the cover of our first magazine featured a cannabis flower arrangement by Amy Merrick—and we’re always looking for new ways to explore the subject. Our editor, Stephanie Madewell, explains the approach: “While there are countless books on flowers, from practical guides to floral design to stunning collections of Victorian botanical illustrations, the homely, less-studied images that people took just for themselves have an undeniably wistful charm. And then there is their inherent fragility and singularity—when you find an old snapshot, it is usually one of one. The idea of gathering these ephemeral images—in their way, as fragile and fleeting as flowers—felt like something that might resonate with the people who enjoy the things we make.”

She adds, “Books and old photos embody time and connection in a way that is antithetical to the world of flickering screens and endless scrolls. That’s at the heart of why we make the things we do–for us, printed objects mark moments in time, creating waypoints we can follow to connect to minds and times not our own.”

I decided to focus on gathering color snapshots from the 1950s to the 1990s. The midcentury rise of color photography coincided with film becoming more accessible, allowing photography to become a more casual act—snapping off an unstudied image of a flower was no longer considered a waste. And flowers tend to look more exciting in color, unless you’ve got an exceptional eye for shape and form.

The Production Process

I began collecting snapshots of flowers: people with flowers, flower gardens, flower arrangements, wedding bouquets, cats and flowers, and whatever else crossed my path. When the count hit sixty, it felt like enough for a book, because we were able to reference a similar image count in Snail World: Life in the Slimelight, a photography book by Aleia Murawski and Sam Copeland that we released in 2020. I scanned the images and began discussing design, art direction, and form factor with Broccoli designer, Alice May Du.

A few snapshots from the book.

The Broccoli team is split between many cities, so we house all of our communications online (shout out to Basecamp). Alice and I bounced questions back and forth like, “Should the book be big or small? How much layout design is right for this project? Should we include the natural borders of the older images? How many pages are we aiming for? What typographical treatments and colors feel right?” At the same time, I worked with Stephanie on incorporating text. We chose to bookend the imagery with two written pieces: an introduction to the book written by me, and an afterword essay in the back by regular Broccoli contributor Rose Linke, who is particularly gifted at discerning and illuminating obscure narrative threads through extraordinarily beautiful prose. This format allowed us to explore two ideas at once: why we made the book, and how the book’s images, random though they are, spark a sense of meaning.

The inside front cover's circular motif, which is repeated in the book's introduction and afterword essays.

Our publications often feature wild page designs, but here, Alice kept the layout simple, using a crisp circle motif on the end papers and the written pieces. White backgrounds, accented by the occasional colorful page, created a dynamic pace and a few surprises. This quieter approach felt right to conjure a mood of contemplation, memory, and the feeling of flipping through a stranger’s photo album. This desire also informed the book’s dimensions, which are closer to square, and on the smaller side, fitting pleasantly in your hands. The title is debossed, and the cover’s paper has a very subtle impression of linen under its soft-touch coating.

The Cover

Choosing a cover image is pure instinct: I know it when I see it. And for Forgotten Flowers, my image pool didn’t have it. Late in the design process, I was frantically scouring eBay, hoping to find a treasure. I bought three new images and crossed my fingers that they’d arrive in time for our deadline. The cover image we landed on shows a small table bathed in light, where a simple vase of spring flowers sits next to an open newspaper. A jacket or a dress hangs over the door. It feels like morning, like someone just stepped out of frame to refill their coffee mug. It’s a photo that tells a story, and for a book framed around the idea of memories that aren’t your own, this essence of life lived fit perfectly. By keeping the original photo borders on the scan, and printing the image at its original size, it feels like someone laid a photo on the cover, as if it could be sitting on that table next to the daffodil and forsythia blooms.

The original cover snapshot laid atop the finished book.

The Reader

Making this book did satisfy a personal creative yearning, but Broccoli is a business, an independent one without investors or any infrastructural support from a parent company behind the scenes to fund our whims. Naturally, everything we publish is done so with the belief that it will feed an audience’s needs, too. So, who is Forgotten Flowers for? The easy answer is that it’s for people who like flowers. The truth is that it’s for nostalgic dreamers, collectors of treasures, daydreamers with wild imaginations, curious vintage-lovers, photography nerds, estate sale hounds, diligent gardeners or florists, and probably anyone you might want to give flowers to (it especially made the team think of our moms and grandmothers, maybe because of our ages and the ages of the photos). Much like the act of choosing a cover, deciding whether or not an art book’s for you is a very distinct, personal thing: you’ll know it when you see it. And we hope you’ll enjoy this one.