The Arrangement – Ruth van Beek

The Arrangement is a group of images Ruth Van Beek made with a collection of books on flower arranging. She has been collecting books on this subject for years, mostly instructional books dating from the fifties to the seventies. They combine colorful still lifes of flower arrangements with the functional photography of a manual. Ruth Van Beek is specially interested in the translation of the strict rules and symbols of Japanese Ikebana into instructional books for Dutch housewifes.