The trees exhibition, juried by Geoffrey Koslov, was in the online gallery from January 2 to February 12, 2026. The juror selected forty seven images from thirty five artist for the exhibition. Elizabeth Sanjuan’s Scalene received the Juror’s Award. Lawrence Manning’s image Breakdown received the Director’s Award.

Juror’s Statement

Trees, as seen in a photograph, is a collaboration between nature, the passage of time and an artist. Here, the artist is a photographer that will in some manner mechanically capture an image. There are more than 73,000 varieties of trees in the world, each presenting its own unique opportunity for a composition. Trees are found in most every country (except polar regions or severely dry desert regions). Attention can be given to each part of the tree; a branch, leaves or roots, each enjoyed and celebrated for its complexity, shape, age, texture, and color. A choice can be made to focus on a lone isolated tree, a group, or an entire forest. In these 27 images, our own relationship to a tree (or trees) is filtered through place, life, death and use.

The photographer takes credit for finding a composition to share with us as a story, emotion, or documentary statement. The images of trees are varied in subject, focus and technique. The appearance and visual appreciation of a tree (or trees) varies by the four seasons, whether it is night or day, and its full life cycle from a start as an acorn, seedling, pattern of growth, confrontation with the elements in nature and its eventual collapse.

Taking the time to take an image is one step, and then the next is to use a physical printing technique or darkroom technique to make the print that will deserve our attention. It is the additional effort by the photographer turned artist to not just stop, compose and then take the photo, but to then share with the viewer an additional effort to make it into an image, into art, beyond nature’s own craftsmanship. What this collection has in it is a
demonstration of how imaginative each of these photographers are to reflect on and share with us the beauty in nature as they see it.

Photography as art is varied not only by the mechanical capture of the composition, but also in the manner of production of the image. Some images are a documentary capture of one moment in time. The photographer is interested in conveying to us a well framed composition, asking us to stand as they did, to see what they see, to feel what they felt, in that place, in that moment. The success of that image depends on how well we are transported to that place and time.

The direct un-manipulated image of a tree will strongly convey emotion and story when taken by the photographer with an expert eye which the untrained eye may casually miss. The mere act of looking up, skyward, we are thrown into a violent tangle of weaving and angry branches in dark black and grey tones screaming upward against a white sky that remind us of the forests in scary haunting fairy tales. Even gazing into a forest, in black and white, we see a tangle of two thin tree trunks seemingly crossing in the center of the composition, as a “X”, in front of a thicker straight tree trunk. We must concentrate to see this as the rest of the image is all forest, and an immense tangle of vines and very thick plant growth on the forest floor. The sky is obscured by millions of leaves in the taller surrounding trees. Yet, the photograph is able to focus our attention on these three trees despite all the wild branch and plant entanglements that surround nature’s “X”. A casual eye might well have missed this engaging scene. Other images are presented to us in color with very muted fall colors, where we peak through the leaves of a nearby tree to our left out to a quiet lake in the near distance, in a style reminiscent of an early Italian renaissance artwork, combined with the quiet gentleness of a mid-19th century Hudson River School of Art painting. How often have we taken a walk through the woods in fall to see the clouds reflected in a very glass smooth stream or walked through a large field where we see a beautiful lone tree just beyond a fence with billowy white clouds cushioning the background. If you never have, then these images open a window in a very special way for you to experience these moments.

Beyond the literal image, the photographer can use any medium of image making or material to turn an image onto a deeper form of art. A photographer can vary the literal image through cropping, tonal change, light and color modification, fragmentation, manipulation, abstraction or turn what is traditionally a two dimensional work into three dimensions. While still literal, the extreme contrast of a truck outlined in white light and with a palm tree behind it, itself in white aflame against a black background, reminds us of the high contrast style used by Ray K. Metzker. The artist can choose to minimize what parts of an image we see, give us scant suggestion of what is there, which forces and demands our attention with a concentration and consensual second-look. In another black and white photograph, the frame is nearly full of a lone wind-blown tree extending to the right located on the shore of a lake (or edge of an ocean) where we see waves wildly and forcefully crashing over rocks. The waves enhance a sensation of wind against the majesty of this singular massive tree holding its own against the elements. The photographer, in making the print, gives the image a deckled textured border around the four sides of the image to fix our gaze. The print also seems to have been given a grainy textured surface. This image, because of these modification, is how this photographer, unlike others might have done, wished us to see, feel and imagine this tree, with these elements of nature, in this place, in this apparently windy stormy weather, for us to feel it as they felt it at that singular moment in time. We must remember that no two photographers, taking an image in the same spot, at the exact same time and place, will make a composition that looks the same as the other. And, despite the many varied ways a photographer can manipulate an image, we should not neglect to point out that an artist can also choose to embed photography into other physical mediums or materials to create a three dimensional artwork. However, with the selections in this collection of tree images, all appear as two dimensional works on paper, but still are so varied and unique.

In this collection, we enjoy the storytelling choices made by these photographers. Consider how the basic choice to make the image in color or black and white will affect how we first greet what we are shown, and how that may affect our reaction and engagement with the image. From what perspective should a singular tree, or a group of trees, be taken? Reflect on how you are impacted if the image has you standing near or far, above or below a particular composition? In one image the photographer gives us a distorted, “fish-eye” image where a very green thick forest is 360 degrees surrounding one grand tree a fairy tale fashion. From this we learn to appreciate the perspective taken by the photographer. Should our attention be driven to the tree in its entirety, or should we be directed to a part of it? Unlike many objects, a tree can be enjoyed and celebrated for the complexity in its roots, the variety in its leaves, short or large, bent or smooth, whether green or a rainbow of changing colors in Fall. All of these factors affect composition. All the other decisions the artist makes, and tools they use, let us see the tree as they wish it to be seen. These are excellent images, well taken and well composed, are uniquely different and distinguishable in where and how our focus is directed.

How light is used in a photograph is so important. It can make an image magical, delightful, mournful, playful, visually interesting and engaging. In one composition, there is a desert scene with a lone very barren leafless tree where light has varying effects. The time of day must have had the sun low on the horizon as light slices through the landscape. There appear to be dunes in the background that are half brown from the shadows cast across them with the other other half brightly lighted in contrast to the shadowed portion. In the foreground the light has a blue cast in its long shadow across the entire lower portion of the image with white light breaking through, somehow separating the foreground from the background. A tree stands very alone on the right side of the composition, partially in the shadow, partially in light, touching the cloudless blue sky above. Just behind the tree, where the floor of sand just touches the brown dunes in the background is the slightest appearance of a string of green bushes or the barest portion of tree tops that just etch across the entirety of the division of foreground and background. What appears to be a very simple image is instead a very artful complex use of light, color and subject. Of death and life. There is a very playful and enjoyable visual feeling from the dance of light and dark across the image in what otherwise is desolate and stark.

In another image, the scene has two trees that appear to hug close to each other while reaching into a night sky full of stars with a touch of light and wisp of clouds. They stand out apart from other trees that surround them at
a distance. The trees are almost anthropomorphic, two people, one taller than the other, pointing at the stars in a magical and mystical place overlooking a very still and smooth lake surrounded by stone boulders at the water’s edge. We are presented a place of isolation, with light coming from the right of the image illuminating the well weathered trunks of these two trees. This photographer has captured with the camera a classic painter’s chiaroscuro use of light. The composition conveys a feel of something sacred and solemn.

Some photographers give their image movement, a fluid and flowing sensation, by the use of layers of brightness and darkness in the photograph to set a mood. We see pieces of a broken branch, brown dried leaves with bits and pieces of other leaves and branches poking through white snow with the sense of a swirling pattern giving motion and movement to the image. The scene is slightly enhanced by increased contrast and brightness in the image that helps capture the viewer’s attention. In another, a lone tree is set in a field of blue and white flowers that seem to float across a green grass field. The mood is whimsical, and lively, with dark storm clouds sweeping across the top two-thirds of the composition, but not in a threatening way. There is a sense that the lone tree in the right third of the image, with a full bloom of green leaves, and with the blue and white flowers around it, is enjoying itself as much as we the viewer would. As the viewer enters the scene, we want to jump into the field and run across to this tree that seems to lean to its right from a breeze that must be sweeping across the field as the storm clouds pass across the sky where we also see patches of blue sky peeping through.

Trees convey strength and softness, defiance and sensitivity. There is a sense of persistence when we see a tree overcoming obstacles such as roots spreading over and around a boulder, or a lone tree standing tall and alone on a barren mountain top, or desert. Trees remain in place well beyond and despite whether mankind stays or moves on. We see fences, and trees growing around barbed wire in rebellion, swelling its own trunk around a bared-wire fence, holding it tight. A singular trees does not move on. Trees reproduce, spread, or endure defiantly, staking out their territory.

The wear and tear of nature encroaching on what ground a tree has claimed is a reminder that nothing is permanent, that nature and its elements get to us and will wear us down in and over time. Some images remind us of the denseness of the forest, and the special effect that light breaking through the canopy has in the morning or evening that is magical. Yet we are reminded of the cycle of life. In one image we have a smaller pine-like tree with its branches weighted down with snow. It is surrounded by larger trees with dark large round trunks only dusted on one side by the snow. This enhances the sense of youth in this young tree covered in snow, but the optimism of its future survival by the strength of other trees with varying trunk thickness, standing guard in an almost protective fashion around it. In yet another image there is a forest of bare, limbless trees, barren as if burned in a devastating fire, with fog in the air over a lifeless snow covered ground. A third image shows us a fallen decaying trunk over the leaf covered forest floor enhanced by limited darkening light, just enough to force the viewer to stare deep into the image. Together the contrast in these image together speak to a life and death cycle.

The photographer as an artist can forgo providing a literal documentary image, but instead use various tools and techniques to bring forward to the viewer their own interpretation and imagination of what they see. In a very
painterly style a photographer has a single large tree in black and white with a trunk that bends sharply left with stark white leaves against gray storm-like textured clouds with wispy fingered extensions in the upper right corner. The composition balances our eye to the center of the image in how the tree twists left while the stormy clouds drive our attention right. At the same time, the tree is set in an undefined open space with a white metal-looking fence in the foreground and a dense, also white, leafed row of trees running, in parallel to the fence, along the back of this undefined area to complete the lower third of the image. The white fence looses detail sharpness as it almost completely visually dissolves away in grainy texture into what may be mist on the ground in the lower right corner. The same technique of blurring detail is seen in this row of trees in the back of the field on either the right or left edges, with more detail toward the center. In this way, our attention is fully on the tree, and we are kept well within the composition, taking notice of the details and texture of the bark on the tree trunk, and detail of the branches and leaves. The tree is given depth and roundness, as the photographer has possibly used the lens aperture settings to take advantage of depth of field in such as way to give sharper detail to the front portion of the tree branches and a much softer focus on the farther back leaves and branches, that almost seem to blend and melt into the background clouds, just like a painter might. Within another very vertical image our
focus is again directed to a tall tree where the lower branches bend down like tired arms and the upper branches hold firm and outward, yet, something seems amiss. On close examination, we see that the photographer appears to have cut, and then reassembled, portions of the image. We see the tree trunk shift slightly right and left, five times, connected, but not connected, built in segments. The border of this image is made up of narrow long segments extracted from what must be a different image since the sparse tree branches in the slim margins are against a much whiter sky than in the core composition.

We have included in this collection an image that captures the vibrant change in color of leaves on a branch from vibrant green to hues of red and orange against the background of other leaves turned yellow and brown. Branches, in another of the selected images, appear translucent suggesting their presence while individual large tree leaves dominate the image in the foreground in orange, brown and purple as if blown off by the wind, against a cloudy enflamed sky in the background. In another, a white bird ascends onto a tree that appears to explode into fragments of shattered branches against a fiery sky above burnt brown earth, with the thick bluish roots of the tree digging down into the ground as if to hold firm as the tree above shatters. Using black, gray and white tones against a grainy sky in yet another image, the bare branches of a lone tree’s leaves appear to explode into a mass of white birds simultaneously becoming leaves, and back into birds, and then taking flight in bright fluttering movement. In yet another beautiful image, at the top third a branch full of green leaves, with the hint of tan-green shadow, vines hang downward through pinkish-orange clouds, fog or mist, falling into the hint of a layer of tree tops, themselves not clearly defined, but shadow-like tan-brown. The entire image has the delicate feel of a watercolor painting or rice paper print influenced by oriental far eastern art.

Some the images reflect on how people engage with trees in nature. When a person appears in an image, many different emotions are triggered. Even though we only see a pair of hands gently wrapped around a tree limb with
the sun low on the horizon in one of the images selected, it feels warm and romantic. We are reminded perhaps of our childhood, and a different memory. Another image places a very blurred large tree center-stage, surrounded by a curving neat line of other trees, also blurred, with a lone child running across a very flat green grass lawn carrying a ball with a smile on their face. A marvelous image of innocence and total joyfulness. One might assume this is the compilation of a number of images to gain this visual impact of movement in the trees. As the viewer and observer, we don’t need to know how the photographer achieved this affect other than tojust enjoy the result of what ever technique they used. And, there is playfulness in a black and white image of a tire rope swing hung from a outstretched branch, hanging down perfectly still, with a slightly foggy morning atmosphere, conveying a sense of silence and times not to be forgotten.

Trees as an object, landmark or setting have always held an endless role in art, literature, history, and our imaginations. There were many many exceptional images reviewed to curate this selection for exhibition. An enjoyable and most difficult task. In this selection of work we see some of the may ways in which a tree or grouping of trees are appreciated and cherished. The tree is much more than a living organism within nature. A  tree, as we see in these photographs, are as cherished as any portrait of a person. We live among trees. We use trees. Trees are embedded in our folklore. We honor trees as landmarks, use trees in construction of our homes, or for shelter. It seems that we never tire of seeing trees in art. Within that art, and in this case photography, we can never exhaust this endless fascination and engagement. So it is here, in this exhibition, that we celebrate some of the many ways a tree(s) are captured in these images. We enjoy the beauty, and marvel at the story told, with the tree as the central actor on the stage created by the imagination and vision of these photographers.

Geoffrey C. Koslov
January, 2026

link to online exhibition

link to exhibition catalogue