Ernest Kafka Photography

Of and About Wood
Sculpture and Photography

Featured at Walter Randel Gallery in Chelsea, NY
Opened to the public May 1, 2009

Scroll down to see selections from the
exhibition and a written piece by Dr. Kafka.

Click on photo for enlargement.

Of and About Wood Beauty

Of and About Wood Barrier Trees

Of and About Wood Icefall

Of and About Wood Ramirez and Iguana

Of and About Wood Tangle

Of and About Wood Workshop

To see related work of trees, click here to view

About Trees and Forests of Vermont and Garrison, New York
by Ernest Kafka

As to my feeling about photographing forests, firstly, it's the usual fascination I have about the marvelous and changeable colors, light and shapes.Secondly, there's a Darwinian aspect having to do with succession, the historic passage of time and the natural course of change in plant life and human life. For instance, before the Civil War, Vermont was 90% cleared, the forest having been used for building houses; chestnut for barn and house beams, pine for floors, hardwoods for fires for cooking and heating, oak to be sold for ship building, ash for tool handles and so on. Clearing the forest gave the land newer uses for family farms that fed the farmers and their animals' grazing. And the animals provided leather and wool which could be traded, sold, or made into clothing, bridles and reins. After the Civil War, the farmers moved to the prairies where there was six feet of topsoil, and the forests returned and took over. Remnants of the past were left behind within them. Now, Vermont is 90% forest again, but the forest is new growth. Other than the sugar maples the settlers planted, and the apple trees, the trees are largely new growth invaders - pine, still useful for construction, soft maple, birch, larch, cherry, used for furniture-- not for fruit, swamp maple and so on. There are a few leftover oak, beech and some others. Nowadays, the forests are often managed to encourage animal life, build bird habitats and produce lumber for telephone poles and materials for paper, construction, plywood and more. Of course, the forests also have old remains- farm cellar holes, sugar maple bushes and many many stone walls marking boundaries and piled up to make the land tillable. There are maples along the roads used after 250 years for sugaring and the old houses (ours was put up in 1796) have chestnut beams and pine floors. So all of this reflects the labor of the settlers and farmers, the historic progression of new plant life filling the vacant fields, and gradually, the replacement of the early invaders by longer-lived hardwoods, beech and oak filling the niches in which they can thrive.

Garrison is somewhat different. It has forests mainly of oak, but with hemlock and impenetrable masses of mountain laurel, very beautiful in the spring. Also with redoubts, the remains of Revolutionary War forts that were used to bar passage upstream on the Hudson to the British. But again, the vestiges of dying trees, the foxes, coyotes and snakes and deer one meets with off the trails, some of which remain from Indian times; the springs, streams and the young saplings provide a glimpse into a paradoxical beauty-- a gloom, a sense of life as well old age and death, which are both inspiring and also ominous, depending on the light, the snow and the perspective of the viewer.

It's difficult to bring even some of all that indoors to be hung on a wall, but I try.