In the still life tradition, flowers and fruit often represent the broad symbolism of life, death, or perhaps a season — the drama of time passing. Floral designer and photographer BY ELIZABETH ROUTHIER Est. 1902 Doan Ly treats her still-life photographs similarly, using the arrangement of blooms to speak to an expansive theme.

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How I Made This: Doan Ly’s Iridescent Flower Photography
March 10, 2021 3:03pm
Doan Ly's "Leftovers Recipe"
DOAN LY
In the still life tradition, flowers and fruit often represent the broad symbolism of life, death,
or perhaps a season — the drama of time passing. Floral designer and photographer
BY ELIZABETH ROUTHIER
Est. 1902

2. Doan Ly treats her still-life photographs similarly, using the arrangement of blooms to
speak to an expansive theme.
“When the flower transcends being a flower and becomes this feeling of hope, longing, or
sadness, it’s able to become a little larger than life,” Ly said. The artist sees the trope as a
common heritage of human experience: “We all have experience and access to fruit and
flowers,” she said. Part of her intention is to highlight the universal nature of these
materials, and the universal feelings they bring out in people: anyone who has touched,
smelled, sunk their teeth into, or otherwise devoured her artistic materials in one form or
another.
Ly didn’t expect to get into the flower business. While managing and living in a nonprofit
intentional community in New York City, she found work-life balance a bit difficult. “To
force myself to not work all the time, I got a job at a plant shop that my friend opened, to
have a commitment to leave the house,” she explained. “From there, it just grew and
grew.” Grew it did. After seven years, Ly gained the confidence to open up her own floral
studio, called a.p. bio (http://www.apbiodesigns.com/).
She quickly realized, however, that teaching herself how to photograph her work was how
she would attract clients of her own. Ly’s Instagram account has over 160,000 followers
for her intensely saturated flower compositions, the petals interspersed with geometric
objects, vases, and sometimes human figures. For ARTnews, Ly breaks down her photo
“Phase 24 of Reopening,” seen below. Beyond its visual beauty, it also captures a hint of
quarantine humor.

3. Doan Ly’s “Phase 24 of Reopening”
DOAN LY
MATERIALS
Roses
The blooms provide a soft canopy to the image as they loom over the delicate offering of
fruit beneath them. When she began composing images with flowers, Ly learned by trial
and error, figuring out what changes when a photo is taken. “What you see when
someone sends you an arrangement is completely different than what the camera reads,”
she explained. It’s all about sculpting, “in terms of using the colors and shapes of flowers

4. to create negative space or to fill in.” As it happens, she had limited access to fresh
flowers when creating this piece, which allowed her to fill in the image in with other
material.
Fruit
“Cherries were in season,” Ly said, “And the blush strawberry is only around for about a
week.” The ephemeral nature of “Phase” adds to its power — the photo captures what
would otherwise decay. The melon adds another sculptural element to the piece, with its
ovular shape and bowl-like divot. “I think about how you expand their physical being into
something that can be overwhelming or larger than what it is,” Ly said. “They can become
“not a fruit!’”
Lighting & Reflections
The hazy glow in the photo is not the product of careful editing, but of long exposure and
a simple overhead light above Ly’s kitchen table. “There’s something about the time of the
long exposure that gives the ephemeral feel,” she said. “I don’t do a lot of editing; it’s all in
the camera.”
Drawn to the natural colors of her materials, she added a reflective surface that creates
the appearance of a tablecloth. “Reflections are decadent, shimmering — it makes you
think of a club, a table from the ‘80s,” she said. “It’s distorted.” Reflections do more than
enhance the scene’s decadence; Ly uses mirrors to show the subconscious. “It’s
subterranean. It’s altered. Reshaped.” Her work isn’t just a still life; when Ly looks at
flowers or fruit, she sees a story: “the relationship of that space and who inhabits that
world,” she said. “The silence of that world and how it tugs at you.”
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