To Pick a Flower is a video essay composed of black-and-white photographs taken in the Philippines during the American colonial period (1898-1946). Starting from the plants and trees in the photos, Shireen Seno examines the relationship between humans and nature, the entanglement of empires and colonies, and the growth of photography and capitalism in the Philippines. If plants were an asset to the empire and lumber companies, then photos were used to catalog the colony's resources. Colonial power and the representation of photography are intertwined, and there always exists some kind of tension in the making of images. [KIM Shinjae, ma-te-ri-al]