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ISBN: 1-59005-014-2
Hardcover, 5 12 x 7 1/4, 16 pages, 6 four-color plates, 1 original black and white print.

Ron van Dongen’s gorgeous black-and-white botanical still lifes have been the subject of three Nazraeli Press books: Alba Nero, Vulgaris, and Nudare. Our newest van Dongen title, Rosa Ferreus, documents the apparent reincarnation of one of his recent subjects. Six digital photographs, reproduced here in process color, preserve the various stages his subject – a pair of roses – experienced after full bloom. Presented in reverse order, and culminating in an original black-and-white photograph tipped into the final page of the book, these photographs bear witness to the beauty of life in all its stages, and indeed raise the question of what constitutes botanical life itself. Sold out. Van Dongen’s success in photographing plants comes from the fact that his interest in them came long before his interest in photography. Flowers were not simply a target of opportunity, selected at random; they had been a passion of van Dongen’s since his childhood in Holland. This is probably what has enabled him to produce such rare photographs of such common flowers and to achieve the dazzling textures that make his pictures so arresting at first sight and so satisfying to gaze at over time. – John Berendt

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