A while ago, I found myself making photograph after photograph of apple trees, not really knowing why. Not bearers of SnapDragon, Envy or RubyFrost either, or of exquisite Fujis grown to lofty Japanese standards. Just plain old backyard apple trees, bearing sometimes blemished and twisted fruit and often deep in the underbrush on abandoned farmland. What made this a bit more perplexing is that I’m a big fan of Joichi Hoshi, who spent the last decade of his life making nothing but woodblock prints of trees. I’d never been able to get over, though, how odd it seemed to focus completely on one narrow subject area. Yet here I was, even more specialized.
For a while, I thought I might be making self-portraits. But any artist reveals something of himself in what he makes. So that wasn't it.
In the end, I realized I like the blackish color of apple tree bark and the mushroom shape apple trees have. I like the changes in them as the year transitions through the seasons. Also, in the dairy farming areas I’ve been photographing most recently, farmers have long since ceased storing apples to keep themselves and their livestock alive through the winter. In most cases, no one tends to the trees anymore. Nevertheless, they continue to flower and bear fruit, in silent rebuke of those who have left them behind. I’m torn between thinking they rage against the dying of the light and that they feel they still serve by standing and waiting. Another symbol of the current state of flux in the industrialized world.
