In Turkish, selam means « greeting. » In the Ottoman Empire, women secluded in the harem spoke to their lovers through objects: a flower or a piece of fruit wrapped in a handkerchief. The message was read through rhyme. A pear, armut in Turkish, meant « give me hope, » ver bana bir umut.

European travellers borrowed this language and compiled dictionaries of their own, with fixed meanings. In 1830 one such dictionary reached Russian by way of German and French. Along the way the rhyme was lost, and northern herbs joined the Eastern roses.

I look for the plants from Dmitry Oznobishin’s book in Moscow’s Apothecary Garden, photograph them on Polaroid, and transfer the image onto rice paper and treated linen. Each transfer erases something, as each translation did: the plant is reduced to an outline, the message to a line from a dictionary.

The series does not try to restore the original selam. It shows how much of it has survived, and still sends the world a message of love.