Understories

For three years, I photographed amidst the undergrowth of a decaying Beech tree, trying to make sense of the existential dread I felt while my father waited for life-saving surgery. 

Anticipatory grief, much like the changes we observe in nature, requires us to hold both sorrow and hope in tandem. Around this deteriorating giant, there is a microcosm of flora, fauna, and fungi. Without the tree's once expansive canopy to shade it, an amphitheatre has opened up. Lives intersect in intricate webs of reciprocal relationships, crossing paths in the clearing. Sometimes so closely that you cannot always tell where one being ends and another begins. The Beech tree and its understory are part of the same continuum, reminding us that grief is not the absence of life but the acknowledgment of its flow—its ebb and rise, its end and beginning. 

The photographs in Understories are hand-printed, using developers made from the plants that grow in the tree’s clearing. The prints are imbued by the plants, creating unique pieces that cannot be exactly replicated. They can have the rich blacks of a conventional darkroom print, but they can also appear faded or toned by the tannins of the plant. The materiality of the prints is an important aspect of the work. Despite being unique pieces, I do not expect them to be treated preciously or hidden behind glass. They are part of the life and death cycle of the tree’s clearing and should have their own cycle of damage and decay. 

I tamped down the soft mulch at your feet and put a ladder up against your trunk. I wanted to see what you see. I climbed as high as I dared but I barely reached the stump of your lowest limb. There was a black hole part way up your trunk. I stuck my hand inside and felt how fragile you are.