LA Botanical is a series of ambrotypes of plant specimens found in the greater Los Angeles area. It was conceived in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the Gulf Coast of Louisiana in 2005; the aftermath, and particularly the inability and unwillingness of the federal government to respond to the crisis in flooded New Orleans, highlighted the vulnerability of a populace stranded in the face of a calamity both natural and human-induced in the world's most powerful nation.

As a mother raising a young child in a sprawling American city, Joyce Campbell was compelled to ask: when the supply chain is disrupted and the supermarkets are empty, and there is no sign of aid reaching you, how can art be useful? She was raised on pastureland dotted with remnants of native bush inland from Wairoa, on the rural East Coast of Aotearoa New Zealand.