Ancient Wood
Somewhere buried deep within our DNA linger the remnants of our pre-human biological ancestors. My series, Ancient Wood, began with a walk through the Methuselah Grove in the White Mountains of eastern California where the world’s oldest living trees anchor themselves to the gravelly dolomite. The twisted heartwood of the trees evokes the molecular structure of the double-helix while at the same time taking the feminine form.
Not unlike our DNA code, the alternating light and dark lines of tree rings resemble the digital secret of product bar codes. The tree rings of Bristlecone Pines have been used to reconstruct accurate histories of our past climate dating back over 10,000 years. In the constructed environment of our modern world, many of us have forgotten, or denied, that we are part of the natural world. This perceptual disconnect between humans and Nature underlies a range of pressing issues from the spiritual, psychological, societal, economic and clearly environmental. The Ancient Wood series illustrates the link between the unspoken organic code and the modern being.
The gelatin silver prints for the series were created in a traditional wet darkroom aligning the negative of a human body with the detail of a Bristlecone Pine. Each image has a compliment with either a positive or negative background underscoring the dichotomy of the two worlds, and the modern digital era in which we live. The models were posed to emphasize the similarity of line, shape and form.
In the binary age of zeros and ones I feel it is of value not to ignore the ancient whisper to walk among the trees.
