The Hunt for the Palm Trees of Cómpeta is a photographic artist book by Sille Juline Høgly Petersen.

At the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen in the archives, you can find so-called “Ribbon Capsules”. A ribbon capsule is a kind of a time capsule. Each capsule contains the owner's archives from a lived life, their collected experiences and their Grand Tours of earlier days. Through her work as a conservator, Petersen has come across these capsules and their treasures many times. The Hunt for the Palm Trees of Cómpeta is inspired by her work with these collections.

The Hunt for the Palm Trees of Cómpeta is an external and an internal educational journey. It examines the human condition of searching for happiness outside of one's trivial everyday life in the hope of finding something better, when much of what we seek is found in our immediate surroundings and in ourselves. This realization is often only found with some life experience.

Cómpeta is a small mountain town in the south of Spain, which Petersen visited on two occasions almost 20 years apart. The city itself does not have a great significance to her, but the first visit became part of her inner educational journey as a young person. She says: “When I returned almost 20 years later, I wanted to photograph those palm trees I remembered from my first visit. Those palm trees that had disappeared. Those palm trees I tried to photograph with an old box camera and on photographic paper as negatives. Those palm trees that did not show up on the photo paper in the developer bath in the darkroom. Those palm trees that primarily only existed in my memory and in the gaps of my recollection.”

The Hunt for the Palm Trees of Cómpeta is built like one of the ribbon capsules she knows so well. It includes, on the left, material from Cómpeta and represents the journey out. On the right side of the capsule, there is a booklet containing pictures with palm associations from her immediate surroundings, and a leporello in a parchment pocket. The photographs in the leporello symbolizes the journey home to oneself and the strength in one's own inner self.

”My wish is that my capsule will help you open your own thoughts to what it means to seek and strive for. I hope it will make you ponder your own lived experiences and what they have taught you about strength and vulnerability.”

- Sille Juline Høgly Petersen, 2024

The Hunt for the Palm Trees of Cómpeta
Edt. of 55 copies
Handmade, numbered and signed by the artist

Materials of the ribbon capsule:
The capsule boards  – gray punching board 2 mm
The 4-folds – brown craft paper
The cotton ribbons – linen webbing 15 mm
The shield and the colophon - Colorplan Pistacio 135g.

Open - left side:
Postcards– Digital print on Fabriano 250g.
Inkjet prints of pinholes – Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl 320g.
Polaroid integral film

Open - right side:
The Hunt for the Palm Trees of Còmpeta I : Pamphlet – 20 pages of digital print on Multi Design Natural 130g.
Cover -  Colorplan Pistacio 135g.

The Hunt for the Palm Trees of Còmpeta II : Leporello - digital print on Multi Design Natural 200g. – inserted in a parchment pocket.