We have now finished hanging a photographic exhibition by Graham Vasey, Graham is a locally based photographer who is most at home in the great outdoors & especially fond of photographing our beautiful region where he is very knowledgeable of local history, shooting only film & producing everything in his own darkroom, the series of work we have in the gallery at the moment focuses on trees...Here is what Graham had to say about this series....
Many of the pictures in this series are of trees and places which I have returned to time and time again in an attempt to capture them at their best, some have become like old friends, each winter I worry if they will survive the winds and the snow. I think it is their anthropomorphic nature that captures our imagination, we feel we can relate to the hardships they have endured, we see them gnarled and twisted by what the elements have thrown at them over countless winters. In our minds we no longer see just a tree we see the hunched silhouette of figures standing alone or huddled together in the landscape.
There is a reason why trees are so important to us and why they strike such a deep cord in our minds. Over thousands of years they have played important parts in our folk law and religions from Yggdrasill, the Norse world tree, a mighty Ash which held up the sky and divided the realms of the living from that of the dead. To the mysterious Green Men carved onto the walls of churches and abbeys to symbolise life and rebirth. Trees were often considered guardians, oaks and yews where considered particularly sacred and often planted outside peoples homes and temples to ward off evil spirits.
I hope to have imparted to the viewer something of the sense of my own wonder and respect for these guardians of our landscape and an understanding as to why I am always on the lookout for another “good tree.”
