Where Mimosa Bloom – Rita Puig – Serra Costa 

Mimosa trees bloom clusters of bright yellow flowers each spring in Rita Puig-Serra Costa’s native city of Barcelona. They grow asymmetrically tall though not often, as the one in her family’s garden. This photo book is about Rita’s mother who passed away with an illness. In her essay she said to cope with her mothers death she ” thought of you as a plant that had got sick and dried out”. This suggests to me that Rita used the mimosa tree as a form of symbiosis of what happened to her mother.

I choose this book as an inspiration for my photo book design because we are both female photographers with a similar background photographing our mothers although the context is different. I also like the way that she has laid out the book. At the beginning of the book there are window cut outs which as you turn each page reveals a thumbnail sized portrait, after meeting all the family members it creates a family tree. I think this is a really creative way and much more interesting way of ‘introducing’ each family member to the viewer. Through out the book she has included archival material such as letters and old photographs which adds another layer to the story. I also like how for every portrait of her family members, on the other side there is an object although their is no explanation I assumed there is a connection between the item and the person in the portrait. Often the person in the portrait is wearing the same colour even if its only a bit as the colour of their object this also make it appealing to the eye.

Another thing I picked up on was the picture of a small bird in someones hand.The photograph was full bleed over two pages which suggests that this photograph is important.  At first I didn’t understand why it was there because it didn’t fit in with the sequencing of the photographs. However after doing more research I found that when Rita got asked about this photography and why she choose to incorporate it into her book she said “When she died, I felt like a bird whose mother had abandoned the nest. I had to learn how to fly on my own” again Rita has used symbolism to get her feelings across.