What is a Tree?
When I moved near the Brooklyn Botanic garden earlier this year, I discovered the bonsai collection and grew to be amazed as I learned more about these very old living beings that feel almost human, and the art of cultivating them. — The trees themselves do not know that they are so very small! They think they are a “normal” sized tree. — Or rather, they are simply present in the world without comparison.
There is a meditative practice in the growing and care of these individuals, who themselves nurture and enrich the soil, insects, air, and organisms around them. The process of taking photos for me has always been a solo practice that feels like a moving meditation, which nurtures my spirit and creativity, as I observe the details of the world around me.
The organic black and white lines and shapes create their own unique images, reminiscent of a charcoal drawing on a page, which can stand alone as its own abstract work of art, outside the context of the physical subject that has been captured.
Because I’m naturally drawn to texture and details and enjoy the imagination that abstraction triggers in the mind of the viewer, I wanted to concentrate on the small, perhaps otherwise overlooked, subtleties in the large diverse world of these small tree beings. I approached the making of these images with a “worm’s eye view,” seeking to immerse the viewer in an intimate perspective of nature.
The arrangement of the images is a story both in how the aesthetics of the images’ compositions play off of each other, as well as a story that is a journey of discovery— one that begins with a question of where are we, and what exactly are we looking at as the viewer? — and which travels into, out of, and around the rich inner and outer world of the ancient tree — much as meditation, gardening, and creative practice, allow us as individuals to explore our own rich inner and outer worlds, in community with other living beings, observing our presence within the context of time as a construct.