Petal Pushers
Budding publishers Brent Dahl and Hanno van Zyl’s first book, Protean Routes, follows the South African national flower, from farm to faraway table, with photography by Jabulani Dhlamini and Jansen van Staden.
ART / 19.09.25
Read time / 7 mins
Mikael wears his take on an office t-shirt in a formal mid-weight cotton pique. On the blind behind him is the FIELDS brand totem, designed by Daniel Ting Chong.
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[01] Jabulani Dhlamini. Wild picking, removing leaves and twigs and making bundles. Gansbaai, Western Cape.
Brent Dahl and Hanno van Zyl grew up 30 and 7 minutes away from HOMEY HQ in Cape Town, respectively, but they dial in to meet us from their workspace in west Amsterdam where, on an August morning, summer is holding up nicely. The wider framing necessary to fit two people into a Google Meet makes room for various tools of the pair’s graphic design trade. An industrial bookshelf is stocked with a colourful array of volumes, below more mysterious, likely still in-production, printed matter. 3D renders, immaculate grid layouts, and playful illustrations are neatly pinned above a desk. With their kind, masculine features and black round-neck tees, the pair present as 21st-century booksmiths.
Jabulani Dhlamini. Wild picking, removing leaves and twigs and making bundles. Gansbaai, Western Cape.
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Jabulani Dhlamini. Flowers being inspected for export at de Mooij Exports. Airport Industria, Cape Town.
There’s an imminent trip to Cape Town on the cards: the duo’s first homecoming as the founders of Dwaalstêr Editions, their newly established publishing house, for the South African launch of its inaugural book, Protean Routes. This immaculately designed publication features a satisfying 71 spreads of photography-in-dialogue by Jabulani Dhlamini and Jansen van Staden, contextualised with digestible essays from Pamila Gupta, Evie Evans, and Rupert Koopman with David Bek. As the title suggests, Protean Routes follows the commodification chain of the Protea between South Africa and the Netherlands, illustrating the flower’s connection to broader questions of colonial legacy, environmental impact, and cultural memory. With its embossed cover, Japanese-fold pages, and subtle colour-coded subsections, the book’s meticulous design as a physical object is perfectly matched to its content.
The South African national flower’s journey to the Netherlands, a crossroads for 60% of global flower exports, served as a fertile conceptual framework for development.
Brent was reintroduced to the protea, as if running into an old hometown acquaintance, at the Cape Floral Collection of the Hortus Botanicus botanical garden in Amsterdam just over a decade after arriving in the Dutch capital to study art at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. It seemed out of context and “a bit lonely.” He and Hanno, who’d moved from Cape Town fresh out of lockdown and connected via their mutual friend, the artist Black Koki, felt an unexpected affinity with the flower. Hanno jokes about their tendency to humanise: “It's like, oh, we're a little bit the ‘exotic flower of the month’ type situation.”
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Jansen van Staden. Elim Heritage Festival flower display. Elim, Western Cape.
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Jansen van Staden. Protea with protective covering. Elim, Western Cape.
Then proteas started popping up everywhere, from flower kiosks to restaurants and residences, becoming emblematic of Brent and Hanno’s shared expat experience. The South African national flower’s journey to the Netherlands, a crossroads for 60% of global flower exports, served as a fertile conceptual framework for development. “That led us to apply for some funding to start our initial research,” Hanno says. “And very quickly snowballed into, okay, we can produce this book, we can start a little publishing company as the vessel for these projects.” And so, Dwaalstêr Editions was born — to create collectables at the intersection of publishing, design and art.
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Jabulani Dhlamini. Daniel Peters, Wild Picking foreman with two harvesters for Wild Environment Business Solutions. Sandberg Fynbos Reserve, Western Cape. [The Protean Routes book contains this photograph in its entirety.]
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Jabulani Dhlamini. Filed documents at the Bolus Herbarium. University of Cape Town, Cape Town.
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Jansen van Staden. Final product, ready for export. Rainbow's End Farm, Banghoek Valley.
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Jansen van Staden. Contraband inspection area. Aalsmeer, North Holland.
Pivotal to this debut project’s success was finding the right eyes to lens their subject matter. Hanno’s first port of call was Jansen: “We’re friends from Cape Town,” he says. “We've known each other for years through the skateboarding community, just being Afrikaans and sort of punky and arty.” Jansen connected Dwaalstêr with his mentor, John Fleetwood, the Johannesburg-based international curator, educator, and co-Head of BA Photography at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK). “I've known and worked with both Jansen and Jabulani on several different projects,” John writes via email. “I thought that they could be a good team because their approaches are so different, yet at the same time, both speak to the power of the ordinary, of human relation and interaction.”
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Jabulani Dhlamini. Recycling of flower offcuts. Aalsmeer, North Holland.
“You take a risk on a project like this,” says Hanno. “We were looking for people that operate in a sort of semi-journalistic way, so that we could send them on, like, an excursion.” The photography took place over three months in locations ranging from farms and the legendary Adderley Street Flower Market of the Western Cape to the equally prolific auction houses of Aalsmeer in North Holland. “It wasn't a small commitment from their side. We were honoured to have them work with us.”
Dwaalstêr Editions will “take something that's quite simple on the surface and dig into these hidden narratives and stories behind it, and do that with artists,” Hanno explains.
The photographers’ experience was key to them navigating the social production aspect of the work without Dwaalstêr Editions’ supervision. “We could trust them to be safe and able to operate,” says Brent.
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Jansen van Staden. Grandville Booysen, warehouse worker. Rainbow's End Farm, Banghoek Valley.
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Jabulani Dhlamini. Morgenster flowers to be unpacked. Aalsmeer, North Holland.
Jansen is as modest as he is talented, so he’s unlikely to name-drop his critically acclaimed photobook, Microlight, his Charta Dummy Award, or his feature in the If a Tree Falls in a Forest exhibit at the Rencontres d’Arles. An equally humble and brilliant Jabulani is represented by the Goodman Gallery in South Africa. Parallel to producing his globally celebrated body of work, Jabulani gives back to his community as the project manager for Of Soul and Joy, a social and artistic initiative in Johannesburg’s Thokoza township. Jabulani’s technical (and no doubt emotional) mentorship has produced talent like Lindokuhle Sobekwa, who is now represented by Magnum Photos (which, as a refresher, is regarded by most as the world’s foremost photography agency).
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Jabulani Dhlamini. Unloaded flower boxes. Aalsmeer, North Holland.
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Jansen van Staden. Trolley of Protea before packing. Vierfontein Boerdery, Napier.
Both photographers “are interested in layers of belonging and history, and have done substantial bodies of work about this,” writes John, whose succinct Protean Routes introduction is a must-read. “What an incredible range that Jansen and Jabulani covered! They photographed in so many places, situations, and it was also clear that they visually experimented widely. I could see the rich possibilities of editing it down, but also the complexities of making these stories work in a book. And what a great job Dwaalstêr had done.”
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Jabulani Dhlamini. Vosse Groen Recycling. Amsterdam, North Holland.
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Jabulani Dhlamini. Distribution of sold flowers. Aalsmeer, North Holland.
In their facilitation of cultural exchange between South Africa and the Netherlands, Brent and Hanno intend to create room for dialogue, tension, and collaboration across geographies. They will continue to produce editions: books, yes, but the duo is open to other objects as well, thinking along the lines of posters, garments and sculptural objects. If it’s produced in series and conceived with intention, it meets the Dwaalstêr Editions criteria.
Future projects’ starting point, as with the protea, should be a seemingly ordinary object of inquiry. “To take something that's quite simple on the surface and then dig into these hidden narratives and stories behind them, and to do that with artists,” Hanno explains. Selecting that initial subject and the collaborative, research- and process-driven making of an edition like Protean Routes — “that's our creative impetus.”
“Their approaches are so different, yet at the same time, both speak to the power of the ordinary, of human relation and interaction,” says John Fleetwood of the photographers.
The Dwaalstêr in Dwaalstêr Editions is based on a popular South African television show that came up in a conversation Brent had with a fellow expat at a braai in Amsterdam. “The name resonated,” he says. “It kind of embodied our essence of meandering, getting lost and sort of finding your own way.”
Creative meandering will no doubt keep their future projects dynamic and varied. For now, Brent and Hanno are focused on trading Protean Routes across continents to build their network and reach new audiences. “That's where we are now,” says Hanno. “First one in the bag.”
“More to come,” Brent adds.
“More to come,” Hanno confirms. —
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Jansen van Staden. Early morning harvest in the rain. Morgenster Protea Farm, Banhoek Valley.
Editor's note: The photographs in this feature are cropped versions of the originals. Protean Routes contains the photographs in their entirety.
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FIELDS sweaters are knitted from Responsible Wool Standard-certified fibres, meaning the sheep are ethically raised on farms that protect soil health and biodiversity.
[01] Mikael wears his take on an office t-shirt in a formal mid-weight cotton piqué. On the blind behind him is the FIELDS brand mark, a totem designed by Daniel Ting Chong.
Dwaalstêr Editions’ Protean Routes photographed by Jansen van Staden.
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