Back in 2017, two weeks before moving from his home in Los Angeles to Paris, photographer Nico Silberfaden embarked on one final project—a sort of parting homage to a city he loved. For many years, Silberfaden had enjoyed wandering around L.A.’s Flower District—a four-block maze of flower stalls filled with wholesale and retail flower vendors. It was there that he met Camila, who would become the indirect focus of his two-week project.

After taking her portrait on the first day, Silberfaden returned every day for two weeks in hopes of finding Camila again, to no avail. Instead, he photographed his surroundings while meandering through the stalls looking for her: “Wandering around the market, as vendors cut, glued, painted, trimmed, packed and arranged flowers; noticing how these perfect and colorful beings were manipulated and transformed, the smells, the tools, the physicality of the environment. All symbols of love and desire, and consequently death, birth and longing.”

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