Reviews of Among Trees
The New Yorker, Mark Rozzo
In the photographer Sean Kernan's arresting Among Trees (Artisan),
New York's trees appear as boulevardiers decked out in Christmas lights.
Kernan traversed the planet in search of tangled roots and dappled canopies,
and his photographs frame trees as peaceful neighbors of the earth's human
residents: palms arch into the Los Angeles twilight, and the unidentified
specimen shares plaza space with an elderly Segovian gent. Kernan also
plays with scale: a row of Tuscan poplars, sizable by human standards,
is dwarfed by an electrical tower.
National Public Radio, Faith Middleton
Sean Kernan is a remarkable photographer who lives and works in Stony
Creek, Connecticut. His most recent book is a gorgeous work about trees.
Anthony Doerr, the fiction writer, has done a great introduction to the
book, and Sean Kernan's explanation of his creative process for the pictures
is so inspiring that I wanted to go out and get a camera right away. I
also wanted to paint, to draw, to sing songs, to make movies. It is wonderfully
intelligent and inspiring.
Photo District News, Julie Gray
In a sense, Sean Kernan's collection of black-and-white tritone images
of trees returns to photography's roots; as John Szarkowsi has noted,
trees were a popular subject for the pioneering 19th century English amateurs
of William Henry Fox Talbot's time. But "roots" is not really
the right word to use when talking about Among Trees because the photographs
in it tend to focus not on the bases of trees but on their lovely canopies
of leaves, branches and sky. As short-story author Anthony doer, who wrote
an introduction to the book, points out: "So often Kernan's images
of trees lead our eyes toward sky." He's right: many of the photos
in this collection are dappled with almost blinding patches of sky that
break through the branches of the trees.
There is a quiet serenity about many of the photos, and the mists and
fogs in which the trees are pillowed, all sharp angles and perspectives
softened, create a mystical atmosphere that invites contemplation. Kernan's
photos are largely unpeopled, although both mankind’s cultivation
and destruction of trees are represented, from an orchard in Greece, with
a ladder leaning against a tree, to the ruthless lumbering of Washington
State.
To amass these 115 images, Kernan traveled the world, visiting, as he
says in his introduction to the book, "the redwood forests of California,
the pines of northern Greece, the foggy hardwoods of New England"-
not to mention China, Italy, England, Hawaii, among other places. Kernan,
whose last publication, The Secret Books, was a collection of
black-and-white still lifes of books, with a text by novelist Jorge Luis
Borges, finds time to work on his own projects while teaching (he has
led courses at the New School and the Maine Photographic Workshops, for
instance) and shooting for commercial clients (AT&T, Microsoft, Tropicana,
among others).
The book is beautifully designed, and the reproductions in it are good
enough to convey the richness of Kernan’s original prints.
Dallas News
Trees are ever-present symbols of quiet strength, though for the most
part, we take them for granted – an indifference challenged by photographer
Sean Kernan's Among Trees . Every tree featured here is a portrait
of grace and beauty, whether in wild or urban environments. Some appear
untouched by human influence; other images comment on trees' relationships
with people, such as the single tree adorned with Christmas lights in
a shop window, or an empty chair that appears waiting for an occupant,
at the base of a lone tree in a park in Paris. The photographs are sensitive
and intimate; a few are clichéd. Overall, though, they'll remind
readers of the pleasures of pausing to appreciate the shape, texture and
presence of these living beings around us.
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