To photograph woodland is not to photograph the picturesque. That is a sentimental act, too easily believed.
This is not nostalgia for nature, nor is it an act of passive reverence. The forest is not a backdrop for the spiritual longing of the urban exile. It is not sublime like a sunrise, nor decorative like design. It is more difficult than that. It does not ask to be seen, let alone remembered. It is not there for your longing.
It is not memory. It is not dream. It is not the chill of a foggy morning, or the sound of rain on leaves. The forest is a fact, unsentimental, uncooperative, and infinitely more intricate than your tools allow.
It does not want to be beautiful. It is not waiting for your lens to sanctify it. It is not an object. It is not ornament. It is not the hushed cathedral you might wish it were. It is structure without architecture. Geometry without repetition. It is what the world does. Just. Does.
It is the most architecturally sophisticated environment on Earth, and perhaps the most resistant to interpretation.
Years in cities teach you how to read buildings. Years in forests teach you how to unlearn everything you thought you knew. It unteaches. It dissolves your diagrams. It disassembles your neatness.
The forest moves in layers so fine you can’t see them, but you know they’re there. The carpet of dead leaves. The soft edge between the canopy and the understory. The light around the form of the fallen. All needed. All of purpose. All working at a timescale we choose not to understand.
To photograph trees in monochrome is to do the slow, deliberate work of seeing. Not glancing. Not catching. Seeing. As in prayer. As in grief. As in love. Grandiose ideas? Perhaps. But that’s what it feels like.
What you search for is not composition, but comprehension. Not balance, but accord. You are not arranging objects. You are aligning yourself. You are trying, trying your inadequate best, to be worthy of this difficulty.
Woodland is not chaos. We only pretend it is. There are rules. Elegance without obedience. You just don’t get it yet. And so you stand among the trees, propped up by your tripod, a little lost, a little miserable. “Can I see this?”
Can I learn to look not with desire, but with understanding?
Photograph a moment of respect? Of gratitude? Well, you can try.
Photographs of woodland made while traversing Scotland, Skye to Ballater, for Architecture Today magazine. August 2020
