All images © Amanda Marsalis & Automatic Books

Photographer Amanda Marsalis was in Venice for a friend’s gallery opening when the publishers of Automatic Books noticed her making Polaroid photographs of flowers. An avid Polaroid user, Marsalis began photographing flowers as her remaining instant film stock dwindled. Though she’d created a zine of some of the photographs, she hadn’t planned on doing much else with her “little project.” The Automatic Books publishers asked Marsalis if they could make a book of her Polaroids, and Reproduction, a lovely 102-page, hand-bound volume came to be. Writes Marsalis in a statement that appears on the back cover of the book: “Reproduction for me is three things: The purpose of a flower, the way the book is being printed, and a woman’s fertility/sexuality. Myself being the woman. I feel in a tradition of classic photographers shooting still lives as an exercise in image making and self examination.”