“Like so many before me, I went into the woods in search of adventure,” writes Anna Beeke, the photographer whose Sylvania sequence investigates the eerie, cinematic atmosphere of US woodlands in locations resembling Washington state. She captures woodcutters who might need stepped out of a portray by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the rib-like ruins of a felled trunk, and gothic ferns thriving amid dense growths of purple cedar and western hemlock. Her title hints on the myriad fables of shadowy or enchanted forests. “They have always been places where humans have ventured beyond the structured limits of civilisation,” she says.
On this picture, Beeke delivers a cross-section of nature at work, that includes the Tree of Life, an enormous spruce that has develop into a landmark at Kalaloch on the Pacific shoreline in Washington state. Unfeasibly, its roots span two banks of a cliff. The photograph is a fairy-tale composition of muted natural hues punctuated by shiny pops of humanity as two kids discover the sides of the bluff.
Beeke’s sequence is featured in Looking at Trees: New photography of trees, forests & woodlands by Sophie Howarth, a survey of 26 artists’ work capturing arboreal treasures in Iceland, Germany, Brazil, Australia and extra. “Inspired by science, folklore and mythology, these photographers lure us away from the pressures of modern life, back into a timeless world where nature envelops and absorbs us,” writes Howarth in her introduction. The youngsters in Beeke’s shot, winding their means by the unusual, coastal cover, definitely appear absorbed and enveloped. Fortunately so.
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