18 Tree Portraits - presence and absence
The Exhibition
Introduction
The job of the
documentarist is not to direct reality, but to let
reality direct the documentarist
[1]
When it
comes to landscape photography I am less sure of myself.
I find myself caught between a romantic aesthetic which
still sees landscape as 'natural' and its contemplation
as a way of accessing the sublime, and my contemporary
understanding of landscape as a construct, something
which can be interpreted from art-historical, social or
ecological perspectives.
Given this insecurity, I started to become aware
of a problem of absence in the tree portrait project I
was undertaking. In earlier documentary work my
engagement with a community and my own contextual
analysis have been essential aspects of my practice. In
landscape photography, although I can use principles of
pictorial aesthetics to organise the elements in the
images I am making, I bring with me a very limited
understanding of the landscapes that I am witnessing.
Each time I walk across the scars, moorland, or farm and
parkland around Kendal I am astounded by the beauty I
find there – but there I am, back with the romantics! My
lack of insight into what has formed and is forming the
landscape, how the trees are part of wider ecological
and economic systems, left me feeling unsatisfied with
the images I was trying to make.
In an attempt to solve this problem I have been
having an extended conversation with my friend Simon
Stainer (who has a great deal more knowledge about the
natural environment than I will ever have). The images
in this exhibition are an initial result of this
exchange. As a starting point I have done my best to
make a set of portraits which will, I hope, encourage
viewers to look anew at the trees in the landscapes
around us. Simon's commentary on what is present and
what is absent, how these often isolated survivors
manage to persist in these landscapes, introduces a new
narrative. I hope very much that this account (along
with the Notes on Trees we've provided) will encourage
the viewer to reflect both on how the trees and we
ourselves relate to our contexts, and also to reconsider
our understanding of representations of these
natural/unnatural landscapes.
[1] Albert
Maysles (http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/aesthetics-documentary)
Heath & moorland
Commentary #1 (Heath & Moorland)
These portraits feature trees in a wider landscape of
open moorland that is typified by a mix of rough
grassland, bracken and rock. The trees are the remnant
of a formerly rich upland mosaic of scrub or open
woodland which included rowan, ash, birch, aspen, holly,
alder and willow amongst other species. Within this
landscape of scrub, heath and bog, the diversity of tree
species that formed the forest edge was determined by
soil type and aspect. The great range in physical
structure was another reason for this diversity. Along
with tall old-growth trees, there was low-growing scrub,
grassland and heath on poor soils and rocky knolls, and
transitions into open bog habitats where impeded
drainage prevented tree growth. The isolated trees in
these photographs represent the end point of generations
of grazing: a process which has led to the failure of
new tree growth and the gradual decline of a
structurally diverse ecosystem.
The survivors we see in the photos include:
• Hawthorn
and oak: both are very long-lived trees, but oak has
often been selectively removed for timber or fuel.
Eventually both trees will succumb to old age or storm
damage, and the loss of the forest edge will then be
complete.
• Birch and rowan: the trees shown here are
opportunists – species that exhibit rapid growth and
tolerate a wide range of soil types. The rowan has been
spared from browsing by being protected in the cleft
rock, and the birch may have had sufficient protection
from dense bracken to escape browsing. Both trees are
short-lived species (75-100 years), and once lost will
not regenerate where sheep graze.
• Bracken: this is a woodland fern and thrives in
the rich brown earth soils where once it was shaded and
suppressed by trees. Bracken is not an 'invader' as is
frequently claimed. This much maligned plant is the
ghost of a habitat that once covered vast areas of the
uplands.
When you look at this austere landscape, imagine the
bloom there would once have been as the massed hawthorn,
blackthorn, rowan, cherry and gorse successively lit up
the Spring hillside. The flowers provided huge
quantities of early-season pollen and nectar for
invertebrates, which in turn form the diet of many
insectivorous bird species. Later in the season autumn
fruit again provided food for birds and insects.
(Simon Stainer, 2018)
Limestone Scars
Commentary #2 (Limestone Scars)
Trees on the limestone escarpments of Scout Scar and
Whitbarrow show a low tortured growth, with the trees'
size being limited by thin soil and windswept locations.
The trees in these photographs are difficult to age, but
the ash and yew may be surprisingly old despite their
poor form and low stature. Ash usually grows well on
limestone or alkaline-flushed soils, but here skeletal
upland soils stunt growth, and summer drought conditions
are never far away, even in the north-west of England.
Yew is another species to favour chalk/limestone or more
acidic crags where it may find pockets of nutrient-rich
soil and drive its roots into clefts for purchase.
These scrubby grasslands form a diverse summer mosaic.
Here, you can find flowering limestone species such as
rock-rose, heathy patches where a blind of acidic soil
may sit across the bedrock, and patches of raw open
stone. Some of these patches are original and scoured
from the last glaciation. Other areas are the shattered
remnants of rare limestone pavement that has been
removed by human activity.
Trees
add a scatter and texture to this landscape. This
forest-edge scrub seldom succeeds into woodland due to
the constraints that climate and poor soil quality
impose on growth, but many species of bird and
invertebrate prefer this open mixed structure. What may
appear ragged and unkempt creates niches between the
trees which support the development of a patchwork of
spring-flowering hawthorn, grassland flowers and heather
bushes in amongst sun-warmed rock. Grazing cattle
further diversify this mix with their dunging and
scraping. The tearing of coarse vegetation they cause
has a positive biological impact as it opens pockets for
more delicate species that would otherwise be unable to
compete without help from large herbivores.
These limestone scars retain an element of primeval
wonder. The auroch would have roamed here, perfectly
adapted to the smashed post-glacial vegetation regrowth.
(Simon Stainer, 2018)
Park and farmland
Commentary #3 (Park & Farmland)
Open-grown trees often have a characteristically
spreading canopy, indicative of the lack of competition
for light during the main growth phase. This contrasts
with the pattern of development in a woodland or forest
setting where close growing trees go up upwards towards
the light with limited branch spread.
It's not always
easy to work out why the apparently random trees seen in
these images are distributed across these landscapes. In
some cases isolated parkland trees may be the remains of
an earlier pattern of planned landscape planting.
This is usually obvious when many trees of a similar age
are found in a clearly defined location (often
associated with an estate or great house). However, many
lone trees or clusters have no such grand history, and
may be a remnant of a landscape where trees were more
numerous. As older specimens have died without
replacement, these hardier instances have continued to
survive in isolation. In other cases, clusters of trees
may be the remains of some form of stock shelter, or a
fuel resource, particularly where pollarding was
practised to regularly harvest trees for wood.
Trees in hedgerows will usually have been deliberately
(or accidentally) spared the flail and been allowed to
grow into specimens. These are then able to exhibit the
open-grown character of parkland specimens. Defunct
hedgelines can often be seen in a row of mature or
ancient trees. These may mark the original line of a
hedgerow that has long-since ceased to function as a
boundary. By contrast, some old trees in walls may have
been planted originally as boundary markers, and in some
cases (particularly in the case of oak trees) will
pre-date the wall.
The
conservation value of ancient trees is enormous. A
stag-headed ruin will support many niches for birds,
bats and invertebrates. It offers the cavities,
rot-holes, hollow stems, and canopy deadwood which so
many species require for part of their life-cycle. In a
grazed setting it is essential to foster replacements
for these monoliths, but this requires carefully managed
tree-planting. Without this, future generations of
insects - essential pollinators and food sources for
many other species - will lose the dead wood and rotting
tissue turning to frass that are essential to their life
cycle. Sadly, we will also lose the wonderful shapes and
features of the wood-pasture as storms and death take
their toll.
Simon Stainer (2018)
PURCHASING PRINTS
PHOTOBOOK
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