Can't fight the trees
By Samuel Ladach-Bark
23 April 2008
These photos were shot in Austin, Texas; perhaps the most ideal place for this sort of interaction to take place. Spring time in Texas proves to be an explosion of plant and animal life. The rain pours down, the sun shines endlessly and the plants grow up.
Being a young, smaller city creates interesting interactions of what we build and what grows around it, on top of it, and through it. Before I came upon this idea camera-clad I came across these interactions everywhere, but often overlooked them. I'm sure the same is true of any urban environment, and the mindless disregard is also true. We grew up with it. People build things, plants grow. Two ideas that have always been cradled in our minds as common place and therefore cast aside just as easily.
After I began to explore this idea I found this interaction to be impossible to ignore. Shrubs pushing toward the sun, bushy, green, and 3 feet high; growing out of the 1/2 inch cracks between asphalt and buildings. Flattened rocks painstakingly arranged to control hillside growth only to be overrun in s few years time. Trees that grow onto or over highway intersections and are cut into jagged shapes to avoid brushing the cars below. The seemingly pointless construction of man-made amenities in the midst of natural settings, as if to say century old species all of a sudden forgot how to survive.
We see this form of competition between man and nature constantly. Perhaps we tolerate it because aesthetically plants are soothing. Perhaps there is nothing we can do to contain the relentless spring-time onslaught that perfect humidity and ideal solar luminosity spurs. Possibly it is interesting and in an archaic manner beautiful to those, like me, who appreciate the moral implications it brings to light. They were here first after all.
As I continued to explore this theme I found other interactions that just made me laugh. Mostly this stemmed not from nature's push for survival amidst an urban setting (which for me wavers between unrequited beauty and sardonic laughter) but from our interaction with nature. A tree that sits leave less, brittle, dark brown, dead; supported from falling a natural death to be consumed and returned to the earth by a length of pvc pipe. Had nature taken its course said tree would have long returned to the earth. But at some time, someone, decided to save this tree. Perhaps at the time it was still struggling with a few leaves left clinging to life. Nobody now questions it. That pipe was placed there by a person, and therefore is there for a reason and should not be removed. And so said tree will stand there, possibly forever, probably just until the land is bought and used for something else. It is this type of ironic interaction that became the most interesting images in my story. For instance, why build a mailbox when there I've got a perfectly good tree and some string right here? Why not live forever as a crudely written word forever stained on the rocks of a national park? Why not build a park right next to this industrial complex?
In the end the why does not matter. The hilarity of the situation stems from our own refusal to change a situation that was created by man, and therefore meant to be that way. Everyday we chop down trees, mow our grass and uproot shrubs to make way for the humans! We never stop to question the why when it comes to plants and animals. Why did they grow so tall with roots so deep? Perhaps they wish to stay in this comfortable spot in the sun? Nah, they want to be chopped down. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to make this just another essay about the atrocities of mankind against nature. I'll leave that to the bleeding heart cases who shoot said atrocities with a camera and loads of equipment probably produced in a factory built on top of what was probably once an ancient forest. My goals are much simpler and less hypocritical. I just wanted to show that our interaction with nature is not always a battle. It can be beautiful and meaningful. It can be sad and poetic. It can be hilarious too.
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