This project is encapsulating the relationship between the hostility of our urban environment and the perseverance of nature in time.As well as focusing on portraying the passing of time in a more tangible way. The photographs are portraits of these selected trees, in their urban environment showcasing their life’s journey. Prevailing their magnificent existence and perseverance in antagonising our concrete realities. Time relativity is very dissimilar, but perhaps this is a way to pause our busy lives, and look at the things that are more important than others.
This project started taking shape during the first lockdown in March 2020. I was desperately looking for the missing movement in the unexpected stillness of the globe.
But this unreal and utopian stillness of time was a strange experience for me, hours and days, weeks and months blended, and time was almost irrelevant for my young prosperous age of 30. Although, at the same time, back in my childhood home, one of my dearest, my beloved grandmother, was ‘slowing down’ as if time was catching up with her faster than before, faster than the rest of us, faster than with me.
My grandmother passed away 2 years after the start of the Covid crisis. As I was standing outside the hospital waiting for the inevitable reality to shake me to my core, it was spring, and the sun was just starting to rise. Suddenly a small normal looking tree drew all my attention, dozens of birds started singing, until they reached this climax, which was neither a cacophony nor a symphony, but together with the ascension of the sun they all sung for the arrival of another beautiful morning, nested comfortably within the canopy of this tree, safe.
Then it hit me, my grandmother, she was my oasis. Just like this tree is to these birds in the middle of a busy and hostile city. That’s how I said goodbye to her, under a tree, looking up, spring was pretty and yet powerful, the time of rebirth was breathing new life to all nature whether in a metropolis or in the fields or forests.
In the stillness of these trees, I can finally witness the long journey of time, the struggles and the obstacles that make it an even greater visual example of ‘life’. This project is encapsulating the relationship between the hostility of our urban environment and the perseverance of nature in time.
I dedicate this project to my grandmother and her perseverance in caring and protecting just as our mother nature strives for.