"Saplings in winter," Tim Connor, All rights reserved
This winter I’ve been shooting tangles and thickets and bushes and weeds. In this picture I shoot right up against a thicket of
saplings. The color is minimal. White, brown, black, sometimes a curve of pale blue sky. The saplings visually slice and loop and crisscross each other as
they recede into the distance. I’m looking for patterns in this skeletal jumble -- and I do find them -- but
only in random juxtapositions, in patches within the frame. The saplings seem
to resist perfection at every level. The thicket necessarily includes
confusion, disproportion, awkwardness.
This is the opposite of beauty as I’ve been taught to perceive it. The saplings do not arrange themselves as the projection of my human idea of order, proportion, grace. So why am I taking the pictures? I try to tell myself that, left to themselves, the saplings have willy nilly grown into their own aesthetic -- their own beauty. I don't really feel this. But I want to learn to feel it more than I do.
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