Memento mori — "remember your mortality." The phrase comes from antiquity and reached its peak in the vanitas still lifes of the Baroque: skulls, withering flowers, worm-eaten fruit, all of them reminders that nothing lasts.

I photograph tulips at the stage when most households have already thrown them out. Fresh, a tulip is an ordinary subject. As it dries it begins to move — it twists and curls and takes on a gesture it never had while it was intact.

The series began during the pandemic of 2020. The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have given it a currency I would rather it did not have, and I keep adding to it.