Photojournalist Jeff Mermelstein has spent decades documenting New York. He sees what most of us miss: fast, funny, sharp, catching scenes from the playbook of everyday life in the big city. Here, he turns the camera inward, starting with flowers, which are perhaps the most photographed subject in history, and possibly the most avoided, for that very reason. From there, the work unfolds through pages of journals, family snapshots, phone notes, and previously unseen prints drawn from an intimate investigation of his archive and personal memorabilia. A quiet portrait of attention emerges – finding beauty in the everyday and meaning in the small things that make up a life. This book was born from over two hundred images of flowers—an unexpected output. Mermelstein brought the photographs to Void with the idea of making them into a book. During discussions, Mermelstein's compulsion to photograph flowers was likened to the predilections of a butterfly. The book's title and content evolved both from this idea and the recognition of the similarity between the behaviour of winged insects and those who photograph on the street. Both moving quickly and erratically from one attractive thing to the next, albeit from street corner to street corner or from flower to flower. The quickness of observing, landing, and leaving. 'I've dug into my archive boxes to make a collage, a timeline that's not a line. Here's more of my story, including pictures and dangling words to help convey an urgent sense of searching for surprise.'