There are a number of pertinent articles, an interactive map, and a good video on western forests on the New York Times online site this morning (Saturday). Check it out if you have the chance…

Here’s one from Cathedral Grove from 8-9 years ago shortly after a windstorm took
down a number of trees.

http://www.marktomalty.com/#/GALLERIES/Panoramic/9

http://www.pbase.com/glafleur/image/117094134

Here is Martha in front of an old growth cedar.

Anyway, my point is that I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to show the beauty of these places through photography. Same thing with the decaying towns. They all have aspects of beauty about them. It can’t all be Yosemite. And a single leaf, or a stand of trees bathed in the light of a sawmill can be just as beautiful as the grandest canyon. It’s just more difficult to see, and to capture and communicate to others. No, and that’s not a bad thing to do. If more of us could appreciate the simple beauty around them, the world would be a better place. And we’d probably put up a better fight to preserve it.

Righteous stuff.

Thanks to Burn for letting this be shown.

Can’t wait for the next chapter

How it affects my appreciation of this essay comes from the way Tom has so well connected himself to the forest. I feel it, its fertility, its moisture. It is as I feel my forest. As Gordon says, “These photographs are poetry, and are better just felt.” It would be great to see Tom’s vibrating connection continue in this spirit manner with the essay. Capturing the spirit of the forest supercedes the content of the artist statement; maybe my confusion lies in the poetry of the images versus the prose of Tom’s statement. A disconnect between the linear and the lateral.

Heck, when it comes to being at the smart-table, it’s quite normal for me to be the one sitting on the kiddie stool. It took me an honest 20 seconds to even realize the figure in image 13. Go figure…

Imagine standing beneath that tree instead of beside that stump :)

I get your,point, though, and the same logic applies to eating meat.
I consume as much wood and meat (though I don’t eat much wood- bad porn joke in there somewhere!)
as the next person but, at the very least we should be adopting more responsible and humane
practices.

Many of the photos are quite beautiful, you don’t need me to tell you that.
And the artist statement is certainly evocative. How the two fit together is the problem.

Since I have been so close to this world of the resource-industry-based rural Northwest for so long, or maybe because of my background as more geographer than art photographer, despite the beauty of the photos I felt something was not quite right here, or maybe that something was missing… Like you had only begun to tell the story, both in pictures and words. In your written response to the comments you certainly acknowledge that… so, as a fragment of a work in progress, I can see the potential here for something really meaningful and deep… but somehow, between the artistic vision you have laid down with these few photos on the one hand, and the ambition of what it is you are hoping to communicate on the other, there remains a vast territory to fill in… some of that can be filled in with the imagination of the viewers, perhaps, but to me anyway it seems like you would need a whole book at least of both lots more photographs and more text to really get across what you are trying to say… Am I projecting my own ambitions and values here, or being too demanding, or not acknowledging enough what you have already done??? Hard to say… but I have very high expectations for what you are capable of, and so I am seeing these pictures and words as just beginning steps in a much larger project.

BURN tends to be about the photos, and photographers… nothing wrong with that, but there does seem to be a bias towards the values of “pure photography” in telling stories without words, stories that need no words… I understand that, but as you know I come from a different tradition in which photographs are an essential part of the story but never enough on their own… and I think, with what I know about your background and your abilities as a writer, that the same may be true for you to some extent… so, I urge you to consider the idea of a book, or an exhibition, or an “app” or multi-media piece, which uses both photographs and words (and maybe sound as well) as the ultimate vehicle for the project of getting across what it is you are trying to communicate about the place where you live.