With more than a thousand varieties from the five continents, the Château de Flamanville is home to the only dahlia conservatory garden in Europe. Dedicated to the preservation of the species of this flower, it presents the collection of the French Dahlia Society, whose many varieties bloom until the last months of summer.

Taking the garden’s territory as a starting point, the Centre photographique Rouen Normandie has conceived an exhibition associating four photographers gathered around the flower.

The invitation was first extended to Marion Maimon, a French photographer, to document the different varieties present in the conservatory garden during the past flowering season, in the fall of 2021. While in residency in Flamanville, she wandered around the garden and made a gallery of portraits of dahlias, “posing” in front of the elements of the coastal landscape: sky, water, rock. She is joined here by three photographers who have each recently developed a personal work on the flower. The Dutch photographer Popel Coumou deploys skilful architectures of colored papers and modeling clay flowers oscillating between naivety and precision. Hubert Crabières, a French photographer, portrays the artificial flower, between pretension to realism and fantasy temptation, while Jason Evans, an English photographer and actor of the community garden The Garden Gate Project located in Margate (Kent), makes still life the place of social linkage, by conducting photographic workshops.

Punctuating these contemporary works, a selection of amateur films from the collections of Normandie Images evokes the making and practice of Norman flower corsos.