Trine Søndergaard and Nicolai Howalt

Trine Søndergaard and Nicolai Howalt

Work from Tree Zones.

You have probably come across Howalt’s Car Crash Studies that made the blog rounds a few months ago. Go to both of their websites, you won’t regret it.

“TREE ZONES is a photographic exploration of the Nordic landscape and ways in which we relate to it. Thematically and formally this work is a continuation of previous projects HOW TO HUNT, DYING BIRDS and HUNTING GROUND.

In a series of images the artists have captured the barren landscapes found in areas along the Nordic timber line during winter. In this marginal land you see solitary trees weighed down by snow. The trees are bent and stunted by their harsh environment. Human forms may appear, but they seem insignificantly small within the vast, white nothingness.

The images represent a humanization of nature: Trees figure as human symbols in a series of ”tree portraits” together with larger panoramic landscapes in monumental formats. In this way a suspense is created between immense, impenetrable space and singular, isolated trees.

These large, colourless images tell a story of defiance, of surviving in spite of ruthless conditions, of being part of a world that you can not fully control or know.”