Half of a pomegranate, with seeds showing, pops up from a page in this book. A tall green houseplant in a square pot towers above the pomegranate. Both pop up from the page.

Houseplants, by Daniel Gordon with paper engineering by Simon Arizpe. New York: Aperture, 2020. Limited Access Collection [TR655 .G674 2020], Art Library, University of Iowa Libraries. Photo: Sara Pinkham.

From co-curator Giselle Simón: The thing that amazes me about this pop-up book is the height of the structures. A seemingly mundane title, the inside surprises like a jack-in-box to an absurdly tall plant that could not possibly fold back up into the book. The work combines photographic elements that create a strange tension between 3D and flat. I start to remember all the weird, large, and otherworldly indoor plants that I’ve seen in offices or truck stops, as if they are part of a new genus of plants.