The Encyclopedia of Flowers

"Encyclopedia of Flowers" opens an ongoing photographic survey by the flower artist Azuma Makoto and the botanical photographer Shunsuke Shiinoki, cataloguing thousands of cut flowers at their most alive and on the way to decay.

Seigensha published this edition in Japan in 2011: a 512-page paperback holding more than 200 photographs and covering over 1,600 species, each identified by scientific and Japanese name in a closing index. An international edition followed from Lars Müller Publishers in 2012, edited by Kyoko Wada and designed by Kenya Hara, and went on to win the 50 Books/50 Covers competition that year. The book followed the pair's first joint monograph, "2009–2011 Flowers" (Seigensha), and opened the numbered "Encyclopedia of Flowers" series that continued through several further volumes.

Azuma and Shiinoki have worked together since 2000, when they opened the Tokyo flower shop Jardins des Fleurs. Azuma began exhibiting his "Botanical Sculpture" installations around 2005, starting with a solo show in New York, and in 2009 the two founded the experimental collective AMKK. Later volumes in the series return to the same flower market year after year to track what has changed and what recurs.