Cut Short

Felled, fallen and forgotten

Cut Short is an elegy for once majestic trees that have been felled, fallen and forgotten. These images are not mere photographs, but portraits—each capturing the unique "face" or cross-section of an individual tree, each ring a testament to a year of unique service. The shapes and patterns in each face testify to long years and changing circumstances under which they ever so quietly provided sanctuary for wildlife, offered shade in the heat of summer afternoons, and performed the near wizardry of transforming carbon into oxygen, cooling the earth in an era of relentless climate upheaval.

This project began with a personal sorrow, born of a reluctant decision. With a building permit for our future home in the balance, we complied with our town’s insistence that we remove an outcropping of “non-native” (therefore deemed “invasive”) redwood trees. And so, over the following decade, with frequent forays to arborist recycling yards, we documented the devastation of other such tree whose service was upended by the whims of individuals, companies, and towns/cities.

Through these portraits, Cut Short calls attention to the delicate balance we strike between our desires for land, for resources, and the deep, unspoken costs of deforestation and climate change. Do we hear their cries for protection?

“Let us tell their stories, learn our history and remember the lost possibilities of every life cut short.”

- Governor General of Canada