In Focus: The Tree at the J.Paul Getty Museum / „Images in Trees“ by Paul Rolans

Anlässlich der Ausstellung In Focus: The Tree im J.Paul Getty Museum, möchte ich hier auf meine Fotoserie „Images in Trees“ aufmerksam machen.
Schauen Sie auf  “Images in Trees” – Archive
Ich arbeite seit 1995 an dieser Serie. Ich fühle mich wie auf einer Entdeckungsreise, die noch lange nicht zu Ende ist und auf der ich immer feinere Details in Bäumen wahrnehme. Meine erste Ausstellung mit diesen Bildern hatte ich in 1996 in der Humboldt Universität in Berlin.

Alexander von Humboldt, der Bruder von Wilhelm, war auch ein Forscher und Entdecker und brachte viele Schätze von seiner fünfjährigen Entdeckungsreise durch Süd-Amerika mit zurück nach Deutschland.
Einige Beispiele aus meiner Fotoserie „Images in Trees“ finden Sie hier und hier
In 1996 I showed my pictures at the Photokina in Cologne here is an article in the Magazine Photopresse about it.
In 1997 I have had an exhibition at the Federal Ministry of the Environment, Bonn. Mrs.Angela Merkel held the opening speech at the vernissage. In the same year I have been commisioned by the Federal Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Forestry to participate in compiling a photowall on the theme „Forest/Wood“ for the EXPO 2000 in Hannover.
En 2001 j`ai exposé mes photos dans La Maison de la Nature et de la Foret (sous le Patronage de la Direction Générale des Ressources Naturelles et de l´Environnement du Ministère de la Région Wallone).Vous trouvez ici un text en francais.
For an Article by Mrs. Marlene Schnelle-Schneider (German Society of Photography) about „Images in Trees“ please Look here
Auf der Homepage von The J.Paul Getty Museum fand ich einen Text über die Ausstellung In Focus: The Tree und den Artikel „Finding the Grace in Trees“ von Francoise Reynaud ,Kuratorin für Fotografie im Musée de Carnavalet in Paris und Autor von dem Buch The Tree in Photographs.
Here are some outtakes from the two articles. For more please Look at http://www.getty.edu ( current exhibitions)

In Focus: The Tree
February 8–July 3, 2011 at the Getty Center
“For millennia the tree has been a symbol of life. Celebrated by most ancient civilizations, the tree has stood for the center of the cosmos and the origin of creation. Represented throughout art and literature, trees feature in the earliest photographs from the 1840s as well as in contemporary works today. This exhibition, drawn entirely from the J. Paul Getty Museum’s permanent collection, presents a range of photographs that reveal various artistic responses to the perennial subject. Documenting primeval forests and cultivated nature, these images explore the tree in its many connotations—as a graphic form, an evocative emblem, and vital evidence of the natural world in which we live.”

„Finding the Grace in Trees”
by Françoise Reynaud”
„When I began to research tree photographs in the boxes of the collection for the new exhibition In Focus: The Tree, each image I selected spoke to me in a special way. At the time, I wasn’t thinking at all of an exhibition, I was simply conducting research to see how trees and photographers dialogued through the centuries—a very universal but also extremely personal dialogue between nature and humans.
Then, when it was decided that we would cremte a book and an exhibition from this work, my co-curator Anne Lyden, associate curator in the Department of Photographs at the Getty Museum, and I chose to emphasize how each photograph was able to convey a message. The images had to be expressions of beauty, strength, fragility, grace, grandeur, strangeness, utility, and so on. The relationship between the individual tree and the scene or the event depicted is what’s interesting to see and to understand. Each photo tells a unique story. Trees are sometimes so old; they have seen so much. Trees don’t wait for the photographer to be beautiful or expressive, they just are.Ranging from 19th-century works to contemporary pieces, the prints in the show are by both recognized and lesser-known artists. Among the photographers whose work is on view are Robert Adams, Eugène Atget, Simryn Gill, Gustave Le Gray, Myoung Ho Lee, Eliot Porter, Alfred Stieglitz, and William Henry Fox Talbot.

The most interesting thing in the exhibition to me is how all of the images do relate to each other—they have a dialogue. Photographers like trees because, very often, they make portraits of themselves while taking these pictures. But not always, of course! Sometimes it’s just a way of finding inspiration and beauty in nature. Some photographers are well known for making pictures of trees, like Carleton Watkins, Atget, or Adams. But sometimes the picture is an exception to their body of work, as with Man Ray, André Kertész, Dorothea Lange, or Diane Arbus. It seems to me these exceptions mean something very personal: perhaps the tree embodies a feeling very present in the mind of the photographer, and somehow resonates with what they as a human are going through in their life. I like to think so.

„Visual artists as well as writers have long extolled the presence of the tree. From the origins of photography to the present day, photographers have considered the tree, with its strong graphic form and evocative power, to be a popular subject. Through the works of artists such as Robert Adams, Eugène Atget, Anne Brigman, William Eggleston, P. H. Emerson, Gustave Le Gray, Eliot Porter, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, William Henry Fox Talbot, and Carleton Watkins, this book spans the history of photography from the mid-nineteenth to early-twenty-first century to address the image of the tree in its many connotations—as graphic form, symbolic icon, and role model for the beauty of nature. The selection of eighty-one images carefully culled from the J. Paul Getty Museum’s permanent collection of photographs and reproduced in color presents the tree in various contexts: the single tree; trees in the urban landscape; uses of trees; tree reflections and shadows; and details, abstractions, and conceptual views of trees as conceived by contemporary artists.„This book is published on the occasion of the exhibition In Focus: The Tree, to be held at the J. Paul Getty Museum from February 15 to June 3, 2011.

Françoise Reynaud is curator of photographs at the Musée Carnavalet, Paris
The Tree in Photographs
Author: Françoise Reynaud
Year: 2010

Images in Trees by Paul Rolans: In search of Colours Forms and Figures

In search of Colours Forms and Figures An introduction by Dr. Marlene Schnelle-Schneyder DGPh As a rule, photographers are always searching; searching for motifs and ideas. Paul Rolans has found his motif and his idea: trees. In recent decades we have come to appreciate that trees and forests fulfil vital live-giving functions in the rhythms and cycles of Nature. Paul Rolans knows these functions, he has forged an intimate relationship to Nature and especially to trees. In the literal sense of the word he is seeking to get close to them. The word tree tends to evoke an associative chain of images in our minds: the trunk and crown, perhaps the colour green. Yet by intensifying his exploration, Paul Rolans' photos avoid these superficial clicheés. His objective is to challenge our normal, selective perception which usually only registers general features. He sensitises the observer's perception with great subtlety. He guides and beguiles the observer into focussing on the closeness and clarity of detail, on the experience of visual touch. Paul Rolans' eyes scan every minute detail, and in the totality they seek and find the special. His camera elicits colour and form from the bark, detects faces and figures which become signs. When his searching gaze has found the form, he both extracts and abstracts from Nature's offerings. Paul Rolans transforms his discoveries into images; the colours, forms and figures emancipates themselves from their origins and become autonomous visual entities in their own right. Coloured surfaces, which appear so untypical for trees, surprise us by their intensity or by the interplay of their broken hues. Forms, structured by light, take on aggressive tips and edges, whilst others display a harmonious, organic structure. Dynamic lines and coloured gradients serve to galvanise the static image into motion. We are familiar with the human face from birth and our perception seems to have an innate preference for recognising human physiognomies and figures. Paul Rolans rekindles these instincts with suggestive lines and contours, highlights them in his photos, allowing the eye to fill in the gaps to complete the image. Faces appear over primordial landscapes, angels float above surfaces. Figures, forms and colours interact, captivating our attention and perception. Paul Rolans reveals to us a new kind of Nature! We discover our own modes of perception, geared as they are to identification and recognition in order to structure our environment. The photos presented by Paul Rolans take us beyond this function. In the process of recognition we discover the puzzling and the new. We see images which Nature only reveals on closer scrutiny and for this Paul Rolans deserves our gratitude. I started my photoproject "Images in Trees" in 1995. It is a work in progress In this video you get a first impression. Some articles from the press about my exhibitions you´ll find here In 2011 there has been an exhibition,"In Focus: The Tree" , at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles Here is a part of a text "Finding the Grace in Trees" from Francoise Reynaud, the curator of the exhibition. „Visual artists as well as writers have long extolled the presence of the tree. From the origins of photography to the present day, photographers have considered the tree, with its strong graphic form and evocative power, to be a popular subject. Through the works of artists such as Robert Adams, Eugène Atget, Anne Brigman, William Eggleston, P. H. Emerson, Gustave Le Gray, Eliot Porter, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, William Henry Fox Talbot, and Carleton Watkins, this book spans the history of photography from the mid-nineteenth to early-twenty-first century to address the image of the tree in its many connotations—as graphic form, symbolic icon, and role model for the beauty of nature. The selection of eighty-one images carefully culled from the J. Paul Getty Museum’s permanent collection of photographs and reproduced in color presents the tree in various contexts: the single tree; trees in the urban landscape; uses of trees; tree reflections and shadows; and details, abstractions, and conceptual views of trees as conceived by contemporary artists.„This book is published on the occasion of the exhibition In Focus: The Tree, to be held at the J.Paul Getty Museum from February 15 to June 3, 2011.