Lockdown, 2020

During lockdown, I walked the streets of Eastbourne counting elm trees in the throes of death. The latest victims, bark freshly stripped bare, limbs sliced back to the trunk with flesh still warm, orange almost breathing, and the grey stumps that stand as a reminder of what has passed, markers of time.

 

The ‘girdling’ reveals anthropomorphic skin. Pores, blemishes, scars of a life lived long enough to hold the memory of past epidemics. My reaction is visceral, I know that this has to be done to prevent the disease from spreading but staring each death in the face – the sudden catastrophic end of a tree struggling to survive stands as a harbinger of our times.

 

As my thoughts transitioned from counting trees to trying to comprehend the daily covid statistics, images of the vulnerable people I knew and had photographed in happier times fell into my head and became inextricably linked with the trees.

 

In the images, it becomes hard to differentiate between the heartwood laid bare and the human skin, drawing attention to our shared cellular physiology and the interconnected nature of our existence in life and death.

 

This work continues my exploration of how we react to life-changing events, the split second – the breath – between life and death. Controlling chaos, coping with emergencies, keeping hold of memories, and letting go. This pandemic has been all about that breath, focusing our minds as never before on the mechanisms that keep us alive.