Lilies of the Field is a series of luminous prints of pressed floral arrangements drawn from a flower album that the artist discovered at the American Colony archive in Jerusalem. Established in 1881, the American Colony was a group of US citizens of Swedish origin, who set up a photography department to record and document the cultures of Western Asia. Composed of dried petals and plants preserved between layers of silk papers for over a century, the flower album represents objects that were offered as souvenirs to European and American tourists visiting the holy land in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This idyllic book of nature reflects the manner in which nature was organised for Western eyes — mapping Jerusalem, not as it existed but rather as a mythical place for Christians, Jews and Muslims, informed by romantic and orientalist views of the old city which often coincided with biblical sites and narratives. The title of the series, Lilies of the Field, draws attention to the replacement of botanical names with biblical references within the album, such as with the anemone plants noted as lilies of the field, pointing to the well-known verse contained in the book of Matthew, "consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They don't toil, neither do they spin.”
Through further research, Guez discovered inaccuracies in the taxonomy and classification of plants in the flower album, which often did not correspond to the local landscape. Guez photographed the flowers in the album as well as the traces of residual pigment on the protective sheets and reconstructed the images resulting in radiant prints simulating large scale cyanotype. By deconstructing and reconstructing the album Guez exposes sutures and gaps between what is presented as official, scientific and authentic historical accounts against that which is fabricated and imagined. Lilies of the Field emphasises the passage of time as well as how the history of place is interwoven and contained within histories of objects.
Guez has presented over thirty-five solo exhibitions, including Futura Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague (2019); MAN Museum, Nuoro (2018); DEPO, Istanbul (2017); the Museum for Islamic Art, Jerusalem (2017); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (2016); the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2015); the Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv (2015); the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Massachusetts (2013); Artpace, San Antonio (2013); the Mosaic Rooms, Centre for Contemporary Arab Culture & Art, London (2013); and the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2010), among others.
Guez was born in Jerusalem to a Palestinian family from Lydda on his mother's side and a family of Jewish immigrants from North Africa on his father's. Guez's photography, video installations, essays, and lecture performances explore the relationship between art, narrative, trauma, memory, and displacement.

A project by Dor Guez, in cooperation with the archive of the American Colony, Jerusalem. Between the late 19th and early 20th century, albums of pressed flowers were among the most popular souvenirs on offer for tourists and pilgrims visiting the Holy Land from countries in Europe and North America. Typically comprising of dried petals and additional plants placed in flower-shaped arrangements, the albums noted the places where specimens had been collected and preserved in resin: “Jerusalem”, “Bethlehem”, “Nazareth” and more. Corresponding to the cities and biblical sites already familiar to the Western tourist, such categorizations were informed by a distinctly romantic and religious view of the area.
Based on an extended research of pressed-flower albums in the archive of the American Colony in Jerusalem, Guez’s latest series examines the link between nature and culture, copy and origin. As with some of his previous projects focused on local landscape and vegetation, it tackles the ways in which a landscape, explicitly or implicitly, is subjugated to Orientalist precepts and made to conform to a Western eye, style and taste. As later examination has shown, plants in the albums do not necessarily correspond to the locations cited bellow, and are sometimes cultured species unrelated to their purported local botanical landscape. In addition, botanical denominations are frequently replaced by literary ones – as with the anemone, which the albums identify as the ‘Lillie of the field,’ known from the Bible.
A project by Dor Guez, in cooperation with the archive of the American Colony, Jerusalem. Between the late 19th and early 20th century, albums of pressed flowers were among the most popular souvenirs on offer for tourists and pilgrims visiting the Holy Land from countries in Europe and North America. Typically comprising of dried petals and additional plants placed in flower-shaped arrangements, the albums noted the places where specimens had been collected and preserved in resin: “Jerusalem”, “Bethlehem”, “Nazareth” and more. Corresponding to the cities and biblical sites already familiar to the Western tourist, such categorizations were informed by a distinctly romantic and religious view of the area.
Based on an extended research of pressed-flower albums in the archive of the American Colony in Jerusalem, Guez’s latest series examines the link between nature and culture, copy and origin. As with some of his previous projects focused on local landscape and vegetation, it tackles the ways in which a landscape, explicitly or implicitly, is subjugated to Orientalist precepts and made to conform to a Western eye, style and taste. As later examination has shown, plants in the albums do not necessarily correspond to the locations cited bellow, and are sometimes cultured species unrelated to their purported local botanical landscape. In addition, botanical denominations are frequently replaced by literary ones – as with the anemone, which the albums identify as the ‘Lillie of the field,’ known from the Bible.

An examination of the color hues in the flower arrangements shows variations in both the durability and frequency of certain pigments. Anthocyanin for example, a pigment present in hues of red, purple, and blue, occurs more frequently, and shows greater durability over time, while carotenoid, a pigment responsible for yellow and orange, had all but faded, disintegrating and transferring to the protective sheet of wax paper. Tracing the remnants of this yellow pigment, Guez photographed the front side of each flower arrangement, then of the backside of its overlaying sheet which, over a period of some 100 years, had absorbed most of carotenoid pigment. Neatly aligning both images – that of the flowers, ostensibly the series’ subject matter, with that of the pigmented protective layer – he re-conceptualizes the image with respect to the time dimension.
The process resulted in two photographic series, both in negative. The first, based on the flowers themselves, simulates a photogram of the flowers on a scale of 1:1, while the second, by converting the yellow to its complementary shade on the color spectrum, simulates large-scale cyanotypes. In the latter, blank areas indicate the anthocyanin- pigmented flowers of the original arrangement, which appear to fade under the residue of yellow pigment. With attention given predominantly to the pigment shed by the flowers rather than to the flowers themselves, Guez undermines the hierarchy between what is perceived as authentic, as opposed to fabricated.