Works on paper

Click on a thumbnail to view a larger image. Click anywhere on the larger image or use the 'Esc' (escape) key to close it. Use the 'next' and 'previous' links or the '<' or '>' (more than/less than keys) to navigate the larger images.

<< Return to the album index page

Street Trees

This series continues the themes explored in "Fig Trees" - the parallel histories of people and trees and the roles of trees both as living organisms and as architectural elements.

 

Making portraits of extravagantly coloured trees, valued and propagated for their appearance, has some of the challenges and rewards of photographing very conventionally beautiful people.  It also commits the photographer to a seasonal program set by the trees, with a timeframe measured in years rather than weeks. 

 

 

Giclee prints 120 x 100 cm

  • Poinsiana - Poinsianas were an obscure tree from western Madagascar, found by a Dutchman in an Arab trader's garden on the east of the island, named after a governor of the French West Indies and propagated by European colonists all over the tropical and subtropical world.  The elements of this picture are particularly evocative for me because my grandparents, like many of their generation, had an enormous poinsiana dominating their backyard and my father's business, when he started,  was similar to the motor service shop behind this tree.
    Poinsiana