This series—one of the artist’s first depicting landscapes—contains photographs of sunflowers in North Dakota at different life stages, some hooded to collect their seeds as the flowers die. While Dodo Jin Ming did not reveal the source of her inspiration, Communist Leader Chairman Mao Zedong, who led the People’s Republic of China from 1949 to1976, used sunflowers turning towards the sun to represent the people of China turning towards him as their leader. Ming transitioned from a professional violinist for the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra to a visual artist after seeing her first art exhibition in 1988. She began by sketching sunflowers and quickly turned to photography, teaching herself how to develop negatives and use an enlarger to print on a bigger scale. Here, Ming used negative images, which show the reversal of light and dark areas, to create a surreal and possibly anxiety-inducing image. The artist explained, “My pictures reflect how I feel about the world around me. They are more pictures of nature than of the landscape. They are metaphors not description. They are like poetry and music...”