Background
SEA has partnered with photographer Rankin on creative and commercial projects for more than 20 years.
More recently we have collaborated on a number of initiatives which have sought to highlight the work of charities, raising funds for their work. Embrace was one such project. A creative collaboration to mark a particular moment in time – the national mood during lockdown – and an opportunity to raise awareness and funds for our essential care services.
Brief
The project emerged from Rankin’s personal photographic reflections on the passing of time, beauty and decay as observed in flowers. Shooting in a spare room of Rankin’s house, we captured the behind-the-scenes intimacy of the process and the unique lockdown conditions in which this book was created. Set against a backdrop of a constrained artistic process, Rankin’s photographs of individual blooms speak to the human condition reflecting humour, melancholy and delight.
Solution
Embrace celebrates life but confronts the inevitability of death and decay. Bearing witness to that process in a time of pandemic, the book resonates with the emotions of a nation contracted to a moment of stillness. As a fund raising project it also makes us acutely aware of our most vulnerable moments, and those upon whom we most depend in times like these.