Ancient Trees: Portraits of Time

About this book

Captivating black-and-white photographs of the worlds most majestic ancient trees. Beth Moons fourteen-year quest to photograph ancient trees has taken her across the United States Europe Asia the Middle East and Africa. Some of her subjects grow in isolation on remote mountainsides private estates or nature preserves; others maintain a proud though often precarious existence in the midst of civilization. All however share a mysterious beauty perfected by age and the power to connect us to a sense of time and nature much greater than ourselves. It is this beauty and this power that Moon captures in her remarkable photographs. This handsome volume presents nearly seventy of Moons finest tree portraits as full-page duotone plates. The pictured trees include the tangled hollow-trunked yewssome more than a thousand years oldthat grow in English churchyards; the baobabs of Madagascar called upside-down trees because of the curious disproportion of their giant trunks and modest branches; and the fantastical dragons-blood trees red-sapped and umbrella-shaped that grow only on the island of Socotra off the Horn of Africa. Moons narrative captions describe the natural and cultural history of each individual tree while Todd Forrest vice president for horticulture and living collections at The New York Botanical Garden provides a concise introduction to the biology and preservation of ancient trees. An essay by the critic Steven Brown defines Moons unique place in a tradition of tree photography extending from William Henry Fox Talbot to Sally Mann and explores the challenges and potential of the tree as a subject for art.