Azuma Makoto

Born in 1976. Flower Artist

Teamed up with Shunsuke Shiinoki in 2002 to open JARDINS des FLEURS, a “haute couture” flower shop offering bouquets designed on-demand using flowers purchased for the respective order, in the Ginza area (now located in Minami-Aoyama) in Tokyo.

In addition to the flower shop business, around 2005 he began to explore the expressive potential of flowers. He invented the genre of the “botanical sculpture”, creating works for which he soon received orders also from outside Japan. Following a solo exhibition in New York, his experimental works have been repeatedly shown at places including Paris and Dusseldorf. While launching the experimental botanical lab Azuma Makoto Kaju Kenkyusho (AMKK) in 2009, he went on to exhibit his works at art museums, galleries and public spaces in Milan, Belgium, Shanghai and Mexico among others.

In recent years, Azuma has been focusing on his project arranging flowers in all kinds of mundane situations that don’t occur in the realm of nature, and continues to pursue the beaty of plants from a unique point of view.

Shiinoki Shunsuke

Born in 1976, Botanical Photographer

Opened the “haute couture”flower shop JARDINS des FLEURS at Ginza together with Azuma Makoto in 2002. Around the time Azuma first started creating his botanical sculpture, he began to point his camera at ever-changing forms of life, committing himself to capturing such processes of gradual decay.Having been working with plants and facing the cycle of life and death on a daily basis, he developed an ability to highlight the genuine color, vital energy and mystique of flowers and plants as specifically natural qualities.

This is the long-awaited second volume in the Encyclopedia of Flowers series of “definitive stationary observations” in which Makoto Azuma focuses on the market-related changes in the form of species becoming extinct and new ones appearing, as his mission and life work. The flowers featured here are described using their common formal Latin scientific names in a list and index. After 2011’s first edition, for this second one perspectives were limited to overhead and lateral shots done in natural light in order to further highlight the flowers’ sense of presence. The result is a book of abundant beauty and documentary significance that redefines the concept of flowers.

本書は、市場都合による種の消滅と新種の増加という「変化」に、東信がミッションとして、ライフワークとして取り組む、“決定的定点観測”としての『植物図鑑』の待望のシリーズ化である。植物名は、世界共通で使われるラテン語による正式名「学名」を、リストと索引で掲載。2011年の第一弾から、第二弾では、花の存在感を際立たせるために、撮影方向を真上と真横からに限定、ほとんどを自然光で撮影することに変更している。花の概念を変える、美と記録的意義に富む一書である。