Art Photo - Trees and Lines

A naked tree trunk can be an inspiring starting point for a work of art. These land art works, the first by Flemish photographer Michiel Hendryckx and the two last by Welsh photographer Zander Olsen,   bears some striking similarities. With an emphasis on straight lines, both photographers are using white colour to mark the horizon behind the trees on the tree trunk. While Hendryckx is using paint, Olsen is using some kind of fabric.

Zander Olsens series Tree, line has been widely spread on the internet. He defines his works as "site specific intervention of the landscape”, wrapping trees with white material “to construct a visual relationship between tree, not-tree and the line of horizon according to the camera’s viewpoint".

Michiel Hendryckx, Brandenburg - 1995

To me it looks like these works were created with the photographic result in mind and with the perspective of looking through the camera lens from the very start of the creative process.

These photos also remind me of ikebana artist Keita Kawasaki and his tree works that I posted in an earlier blog post. You'll find the blog post on Keita Kawasaki through this link. Kawasaki also relates the tree to it's natural surrounding landscape by adding lines on the tree trunks. But in his work it is not in relation to the horizon behind the tree, but rather to the beams of sunlight in between the trunks, which is of course also more related to the organic life of the tree.

Zander Olsen, Beeches 2004

   Zander Olsen, Untitled (Cader) 2008

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