Communication, I believe, is not about talking, listening, or seeing—it is about understanding.
While visiting friends in Hamburg, Germany, this past May (2017) I took the opportunity to explore Ohlsdorf Cemetery. As the first American-style park cemetery in Germany, opened in 1877, it is of significant importance to the European cemetery culture. Its 400 hectares are home to 450 species of deciduous trees and conifers.
For the publication The Beauty of Bark (Hawkeye, 2015), I photographed trees, their bark, from the historic plantings at Toronto’s Mount Pleasant Cemetery (1876). I was now walking in another cemetery where the original plantings were 140 years old.
At Ohlsdorf, I was greeted by an amazing selection of trees. I spent the next hours walking, meeting the trees, and photographing—not wondering what the images might mean. As the hours passed, beyond the superficial beauty I sensed a language of bark.
I regard the following images as a series of bark signatures, perhaps a first step to understanding the language of bark.