WE ALL FALL DOWN

Cyanotype on Ash Wood and Paper

Schuylkill Center For Environmental Education, Philadelphia, PA

2019

The work for We All Fall Down begins as a photographic survey of the pre-spring leafless landscape - the trees marked for removal, the spaces left behind from the felled trees, the tree stumps that remain. 

The single unframed prints are bold in the classic Prussian Blue of cyanotype and serve as sketches of history. Using this 19th century process - whose origins began as means of documentation of flora and fauna - I present a series of prints that records the time when affected ash trees were intentionally removed due to the Emerald Ash Borer infestation.

The tree sections printed with cyanotype are record keepers of a different kind. The wood stumps take on a new form as totems marking a significant point in environmental history when the emerald ash borer was introduced to the western world through infested shipping containers. Reflecting the ever changing landscape of The Schuylkill property, they are impermanent in that the wood can retain latent chemistry and as a result may be subject to fluctuation.

 Although the ash trees are no longer integral to the forests, their remnant stumps are now colluding with the cyanotype for the remainder of their existence.

The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Educatio 2019

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