Trees

I wanted to focus on how humans are changing the landscape in this way. Cutting down old, beautiful, trees that help us to breathe and provide food and shelter for other animals and life sources and replacing them with concrete buildings and these pathetic, young, pollinating trees. I focused on this subject by walking around downtown Chattanooga and capturing images of these sidewalk trees in front of the concrete buildings that stand where the tree’s friends once grew. I wanted there to be an aspect of human effect or evidence that a human has changed something in these photographs. To do so I decided to essentially “poorly” Photoshop the sidewalk trees out of the photographs, creating a large “tree-shaped” negative space in each photograph standing in front of a concrete background. Badly photoshopping these trees out of the images was an important aspect of this project for me. I wanted to reenact the carelessness in which some cities seem to be structured and laid out in terms of conserving space and land. The contrast between the background and the negative space where the tree once was is meant to act as a reminder to the viewer of what was removed and what these things pictured replaced.