GHOST TREES

The work „ghost trees“ creates a visual archive of the new forest landscape. Images of the forest in media and popular culture still revolve around the romanticized view of a verdant and dense forest environment. But the rapid climate-based transformation of forest ecosystems challenges those idealized notions of forest aesthetics.

The first chapter of the archive explores forests in the Hegau area in South Germany. One of the most obvious transformations of these ecosystems is a growing number of dying, bare-branched trees as a consequence of rising temperatures, drought, monoculture and bark beetle damage. To build the visual archive, I collect photographs of various types and stages of the „ghost trees“. So far, the archive documents the new forest landscape in five categories.

digital print on kozo washi paper. dimensions variable. 2022.