Photographer’s Statement:

Grasse is France’s perfume capitol where each May they host their famous Fête de la Rose, Rose Festival. In aesthetic mastery (and madness!), José and Corinne Mendez (Art-Floral Grasse) created a 35,000-rose cupcake-shaped concoction inside a gazebo. Within a simple outline, their sense of design and color was simply mind-blowing; this is one of the tiers shot from above, an angle seen only by its creators (and me).

—Rebekah West