I am thinking about trees

 

When I was at Jessops cottage last week I was going to take some pictures of trees.  I took my proper camera equipment and imagined walking in the early morning and doing long exposures of single trees, their leaves would blur by their gentle movement as they blow in the wind.  I tried this arty farty based approach when I first started the work with Abi in Rotherham. Long exposures to try and capture the movement of kids, I ended up getting some interesting pictures that the parents didn't like as they thought they were crap and out of focus.

There are two reasons why I couldn't actually get out and take some images.  The first was having the confidence that the images I took would be anything more than banal and the second that going out as a singular subjective individual and taking some images that were trying to be something different to everyone elses images is exactly what you would expect an artist to do, especially and artist who thinks he can't draw.  There is a short descriptive passage at the start of John Berger's  book A Fortunate Man where he describes the countryside. He talks of a cold morning where every leaf on the trees felt separate. I like this description because it reminds me of a feeling-separate-from-things, a leaf on its own rather than part of a tree.  

Long exposure shots with a tripod where the movement of the world blurs everything is also something everyone who gets into photography tries to do at some point.  Perhaps its because you need a manual camera, a tripod and usually a ND filter, which reduces the amount of light that gets to the sensor to make it work.  It isn't a complicated thing to do yet it produces an image that doesn't actually look like what you are looking at, a waterfall becomes a plume of steam and a the perpetual waves of the sea become a thick watery mist.  I wasn't sure what the leaves of a tree would become, perhaps a splurge of green reminiscent of an impressionist painting or perhaps they would look just like an unfocused blurry image.  Yet I had woken up on each day and the leaves on the trees had felt distinct and individual so my camera stayed in its bag, batteries fully charged for another day. 

I am probably doing the work for the tree project though.  I am holding the line of thought and kicking back at any threads or paths that may emerge to early and take me another way.  I am unsure about the science and stepping back into the world of science arts cross-overs.  I bought a New Scientist mag in Sherbourne and remembered how short the features are. It is a very specific type of writing that appears to keep you up to date yet tells you very little.  I am fighting my cynicism as Afghan children  flee oppression and fall from hotel windows. I do not think about how to engage people in thinking about treescapes I think more about the lack of a need for a hierarchy of needs.  If you are hungry you can still appreciate a tree, feel the separateness of its leaves on a cold morning. You and it are still connected parts of the world. 

I am for some reason drawn to dead trees. Like the artist Paul Nash  returning from the desolation of the first world war dead trees seem symbolically more current. They stand on weak roots holding on to the last remnants of their carbon, elegantly still standing or falling before the power of the next storm, downgraded from a hurricane and given a name like Barry or Malcolm. 

If I were a tree what would I be ? this could be a good arty game to play on treescapes.   Perhaps something we all could do, find a tree that most resembles us and take a picture.  This is my first idea then to smear across the project - to bother peoples sensibilities and challenge their notion of what could be worthwhile. It is a little stupid and anthropomorphic and I am sure to raise eyebrows and rumblings of dissent but perhaps its a much better thing to present than me taking lots of blurry pictures of trees on a misty morning in Dorset.