Stam van een iep te North Andover before 1890

Curator: What strikes me most is the palpable stillness, the sense of a quiet moment captured, almost revered, in Henry Brooks’s photographic print, likely made sometime before 1890. Editor: The stillness gets right into those gnarled roots, doesn’t it? I am taken by their stubborn refusal to yield and those labor-intensive techniques that were a must to record something as mundane as this section of trunk. What about that choice? Curator: True, photography in that era wasn't as easy, which makes you consider how intentional the framing of "Stam van een iep te North Andover" must be, to spotlight a lone tree trunk like this. It transforms it into almost a monument. Editor: Right, and thinking materially about it, we should talk about its potential as resources. Its presence as potential lumber, fuel, food. I wonder about the cultural significance the communities assign it, and those demands. What does Brooks choose to spotlight and not? Curator: Absolutely, and think about the selection process! Brooks didn’t just *find* this tree. It had to be the perfect subject to immortalize with his camera, standing amidst whatever societal landscape existed in Massachusetts. What was in that landscape during the end of the 19th century, with new types of fuel or production demanding a change in practices and landscape? It makes the act of simply *observing* it – immortalizing the act – all the more profound. Editor: It definitely complicates it! I guess I'm asking what Brooks means to imply by showing its status and how we come to relate and access nature through pictures of it? It has always had political and socioeconomic ramifications. Curator: Indeed! Perhaps it's Brooks whispering a subtle question to us about longevity, resilience, what parts we take, what parts we use. How does what's been altered echo or bounce within what's there today? Editor: So, beyond what we know it can literally yield? And what labor must provide, cultivate, destroy, to reach the viewer to see and relate to that possibility? Curator: Precisely, so in this picture there may not only be the image of the Elm, but those who tend it: whether to care, protect, or simply extract from the beauty the possibility for another reality, like a building or home. The possibility that lies inherent. Editor: To make something visible, by any means! It’s all tangled down into the roots.