*Available September 2026. Signed edition is pre-order now.
*To commemorate the publication, we will be releasing a special edition printed using the collotype method by Benrido.

　
We are pleased to announce the publication of butterflies are quicker than rock, the first photobook by London-based artist Feiyi Wen. In this work, Wen draws on Eastern thought to contemplate the fragility of ecosystems and the ephemerality of time. The title evokes the tension between the fleeting and the enduring, standing as a metaphor for the precarious balance of our present ecosystem.

Alongside her work as a reference librarian at the British Library, Wen creates works that take nature and landscape as their subjects, drawing on her own photographs and, at times, found images. She has steadily broadened the scope of her practice, taking part in 2024 in the two-person exhibition “Borrowed Landscapes” at Chanel Nexus Hall. What distinguishes Wen’s work is her method of making it. Combining traditional printing techniques with newer developing processes, she layers scanning, manipulation, rephotography, and printing to produce faded textures and intricate layers that mirror the textures of the landscape. Through the way these are assembled and composed, the photograph shifts from a fixed record into a fluid dialogue in which memory and archive reweave their narratives.

Her natural motifs and landscapes recall traditional Chinese ink landscape painting, yet, overlaid with countless layers, they emerge as new landscapes—asking us what it means to look at a landscape at all. The book’s design is by Akiko Wakabayashi, who gives experimental form to Wen’s technically varied work by combining different paper stocks and numbers of printing colors. The result is a space of quiet contemplation, where the viewer can experience a state in which scene and emotion dissolve into one another.