TREES: PORTRAITS OF TIME
Arbor Day and Earth Day have us focused on the beauty of trees this week. Photographer, Beth Moon, makes us see trees, especially ancient trees, in new ways.
Trees are earth’s oldest living monuments. Some, more than 5,000 years old, have figured out how to adapt and withstand changing environmental and human impacts. The oldest are usually the largest. Now known as “champion” trees, their majesty comes through in Moon’s portraits.
(Photo Credit: “The Strangler Fig,” by Beth Moon)
Tree portraits are especially important to see today because they can tell us not only where we’ve been as a planet and as a species, but they can also give us insight into how we might be able to survive, thrive, and live more beautifully now.
Moon’s “Portraits of Time” is an ongoing series, 14 years in the making, to-date. She selects her subjects after considering their age, size, and notable history. Her most recent is the “Zalmon Olive Tree,” one of the oldest trees in Israel, located in the northern Galilee region, with its deeply gnarled fat trunk and its spreading bouquet of fruit-laden branches.
(Photo: “Zalmon Olive Tree,” by Beth Moon)
Moon celebrates diversity in trees with her otherworldly portrayals of exotic specimens, such as the rectangular trunked 1,000 year-old baobab in Ifaty Madagascar, the Pulpit Yew in Nantglyn, England, the towering Amazonian Kapok tree, and Strangling Figs, to name a few. Each presents its own photographic challenge and reward.
(Photo Credit: “The Ifaty Teapot,” by Beth Moon)
“I try to arrive at the location first to examine the best side of the tree,” Moon explains. She studies angles, lighting, and composition and optimizes her shots. “Trees, like humans, definitely have a 'good side'!”
You can feel their personalities through the photographs. Her portrait of the “Chestnut Tree of Cowdray Park,” with its 12 meter girth, looks like a warm and cheery great grandmother, while her “Great Western Cedar of Gelli Aur,” looks like an exuberant affectionate auntie always ready for a giant hug.
Sometimes, Moon travels to remote pockets of the planet, accessing the inaccessible. “One of the best trips I took was to the island of Socotra where I was able to sleep right beneath the trees, getting the last light at dawn and the first rays of sun in the morning,” Moon recalls, recounting her “Dragon’s Blood” shoot off the coast of Yemen.
(Photo Credit: “Dragon’s Blood at Dawn,” by Beth Moon)
These handmade photographic works of art are as much about how Moon coaxes metal, paper, and light, as they are about the subjects she studies. She creates platinum/palladium prints, considered to be the longest lasting photographic process, as an homage to the longevity and survival of her subjects. A platinum print can last for centuries, much like a strong, well-tended tree. Moon mixes the powdered metals and creates a tincture, according to her own recipe, then hand-coats sheets of heavy watercolor paper before exposing them to light in a unique process which embeds the metals in the paper. Working the materials by hand, much the way a painter would, Moon has the freedom to pursue her creative vision in process.
(Photo Credit: “Great Western Red Cedar of Gelli Aur,” by Beth Moon)
Moon is very inspired by David Milarch and the Archangel Foundation’s efforts to save our planet by planting ancient forests, using clones of the ancient champion trees, as portrayed in The Man Who Planted Trees
Watch for Moon’s forthcoming book, Between Earth and Sky, (Charta, fall 2013), which contains five major series of her work, including “Portraits of Time” (ancient and legendary trees), “Savage Garden” (the sinister beauty of carnivorous plants), “Augers and Soothsayers” (exotic chickens), “Kingdom Come” (man-to-animal totems), and “Odin’s Cove” (a pair of mated ravens).
