Cottonwood Tree, Cache la Poudre River Possibly 1997 - 2000

William Wylie made this gelatin silver print of a Cottonwood Tree sometime around the turn of the millennium. I’m struck by the sheer volume of that tree trunk! Its imposing verticality, the deep wrinkles and furrows in the bark, all rendered in exquisite detail through light and shadow. I can imagine Wylie out there with his camera, circling this giant, trying to capture its essence, its weight, its place in the landscape. Did he feel dwarfed by its presence, or did he feel a sense of connection, a shared existence? I can see the tradition of landscape photography in this work - think of Ansel Adams and his reverence for nature - but there's something else going on here, too. It’s like Wylie is using the tree as a portrait, a stand-in for human experience, its weathered surface telling a silent story of time and endurance. This resonates so much in this photographic conversation across time and place.