Tree/House

Tree / House is a project I completed in the first half of 2018 in Eureka, California, while serving as visiting faculty at Humboldt State University. The area is known for its exceptional outdoor sea vistas and old-growth redwoods, so I expected to continue my work on how urban dwellers interact with nature. But instead, I became compelled by things I could see from the interior of my apartment. A whole local ecosystem unfolded in a stage-play for me, through the portal of my second-floor windows. What emerged is a symbolic and sometimes-visible barrier between me and the 80’ Deodar Cedar with a large treehouse in it outside. And more comprehensively, between me and the world. Through voyeuristic imagery of birds, absent the scientific, proper, identifiable, or what might otherwise be considered desirable views of these creatures and habitats, a sort of lie about the natural world emerges. Chromatic aberrations, reflections, and lens anomalies are intentionally played up, to alert the viewer to my panopticon. This serves as a further visual barrier between me and the world outside. This work explores the thin line between actual experience, observation, memory, and the photographic medium itself.