Written Statement

When asked to dream up a landscape it's hard not to imagine vast hills, lakes, and skies all rolled into one perfect, harmonious image. In my project, I tried to take this idea of what is commonly thought to be a landscape but manipulate it in an unexpected way.

I have been drawing these dead trees with human legs for several years now. I cannot remember exactly what sparked the obsession, or how I even came up with the idea. One day, it just seemed like the right thing to do. When told about the assignment, I couldn't help but imagine the common landscape: a forest ... only instead of roots to connect the trees to the forest floor are limbs, ankles and toes. This clustering of my tree legs and the interaction between the forms of their branches and limbs led me to my final image.

As a photographer, I am fascinated in people and in the mystery and complexity of nature. Through my tree legs, I sought to combine these two elements as one ... connecting the fate of man to the inevitable, yet prolonged fate of nature. After hundreds of years, a tree may die. It may contract a disease, may be cut down. Humans face the same circumstances- they may be cancerous, murdered. This relationship between the organisms created a basis for my thoughts about this project. If we all live to die, and realize that this is the inevitable truth, why and how do we thrive? I wanted to show that we face our own mortality with creating useless activities and rituals to waste time in all the nothingness we call life. I suppose it's pretty depressing, but I don't think of it that way. Life is something that, supposedly, we did not choose to participate in. We were formed by our parents, a coincidence between that specific egg and that specific sperm and we arrive with no warning of the possible coming of misery. And even though there is misery, we find pretty amusing things to entertain our existence, that in hindsight seem pointless, but when you think about it are perfect. Expected. They seem a natural and progressive wasting of time, and the more you forget that you're wasting time with rituals and games, the happier you are. Sometimes, life is to forget. When you can't remember, it's great.

I drew out all of my tree legs on paper. I did about 7 or 8 variations of legs and dead trees, some with one branch, some with holes. I then scanned them into photoshop, adjusted their size, color and placement. I arranged them in ways that made them seem like they were interacting with or reacting to each other. Some are alone, some are dancing, some have laid down, some are running. Each figure seems to have their own method of living, or "wasting time". They all exist in this cluster coping with their existence in any way that they can, that they see fit for themselves. They are a congregation, a village. And we all are. We're all just trying to get along.