In November 2024, I flew from Paris to California and I spent two weeks with my mother, who was battling a very aggressive form of breast cancer. When I returned home to Paris, I discovered an injured butterfly inside my apartment… all of my windows were closed and had been for over two weeks I had been away… the butterfly couldn’t fly, in fact all they were able to do was flap on the floor, and I appropriately named them, Flapjack.

I have been caring for injured snails for over 4 years now, so I immediately put Flapjack in a spare terrarium. I have actually never been particularly fond of butterflies and had a fear of them for a while but Flapjack quickly changed all that. Flapjack had extremely thin wings and a chunk missing out of one, I am not sure exactly when they hatched and still don’t know how they managed to find their way into my apartment. I watched Flapjack for hours, my mother actually very strongly believed that Flapjack was my grandmother Rita who passed away in March 2024 of breast cancer at the age of 90.

Flapjack passed away on Dec 8th 2024, on December 13th 2024 I received a phone call from my mother her health had taken a drastic turn for the worse, I immediately booked the soonest possible flight from Paris and I arrived at her home in California the evening of December 14th and she passed away in my arms on December 15th very peacefully. My mother was very ill and disabled my entire life, death was something that was always talked about openly and practically ever since I was child. My mother out lived every single medical professional's opinion on her life expectancy.

My mother loved Flapjack and got daily updates and the polaroids I took of Flapjack were the last self-portraits I shared with my mother, she got to hold them in her hands. She was and forever will be my biggest fan and supporter of my work. I shot one roll of BW 120 film of Flapjack that I developed in my own homemade developer and then made cyanotypes at my mother's house after she passed away.