Photographer connects nature to reminiscence – The Collegian

The tree branches stretched towards the sky, gnarled and twisted. Water quietly lapped on the shore, reflecting a moody grayness that the morning had settled on. Fog rolled over the water and up the boring, grassy hill, shrouding the tree in its solitude. 

NW assistant professor Kent Anderson Butler captured this second in his latest images exhibition “Silent Witnesses.” 

“I’ve always been fascinated with nature, the landscape and especially trees,” Anderson Butler stated. “For some reason, all throughout my life, anytime I’ve come upon a tree, there’s just something about it that I feel a kind of kinship to.” 

The exhibition, which runs till Feb. 20, shows images of three totally different bushes on NW Campus, every with a development of publicity footage that vary from an ethereal mild to a darkish depth. 

 “Stripped bare or softly veiled, these trees stand as sentinels, their stillness suggesting a deep connection to the land and the passage of time,” Anderson Butler stated on his artist web site. “They are silent witnesses to the awakening of the world.” 

At the opening reception on Feb. 3, Anderson Butler described how every set of bushes spoke to him otherwise.  

“I use myself in my work,” Anderson Butler stated. “I wanted to still be able to convey some of the things I’m interested in conceptually without using my physical body in the work. And so, in some ways, to me, these pieces act as absent portraits.” 

“Unheard Voices,” the primary photograph sequence, shows a tree nestled amongst rocks on a reddish, grassy hillside. Anderson Butler stated this tree spoke to him as a result of it’s “this solitary tree on this little bluff,” and he thinks, “Sometimes, we feel like that as individuals.” 

“Hushed Observer,” the second sequence of images, shows a tree looming above the murky Marine Creek Lake, nearly as whether it is peering at its reflection. The sky appears to be like practically countless, mixing into the water in shades of blues and grays. Anderson Butler stated the reflection of the water is just like “the duality of who I am as an individual.” 

“Mute Evidence,” the third sequence of images, shows a tree rooted on a slanted grassy spot. In the background, a tree department emerges from the grey lake, offering depth to the photograph. Anderson Butler highlighted how the tree has “a relationship to the branch in the water,” nearly as if “these two elements of nature are having dialogue with each other.” 

The excessive publicity photographs problem the viewer to step nearer to the image, he stated.  

“Part of the body of work is also about perception,” he stated. “These are photographed in the fog these trees … and if you look, it almost seems like it’s a time lapse, but from light to dark.”  

Each sequence has 10 footage of the identical tree, however none are the identical.  

“As a photographer you move around like you are experiencing a space. The light’s changing, the clouds are changing and you’re usually looking for that perfect moment to get your shot,” NW arts professor Trish Igo stated. “It’s like you’ve taken that perfect moment, and almost like a prism divides light, you spread it back out again.” 

“Silent Witnesses” was taken utilizing Anderson Butler’s telephone digital camera in a single sitting. He stated he was on a morning stroll right down to the lake earlier than his lessons when he captured the images. 

This is Anderson Butler’s second yr instructing at TCC, and his aim for his college students is to “take the things that are deep and driven in their soul and then manifest those things out into a piece of art that they make.”  

“I tell my students all the time, like it’s really easy for us to become numb to our surroundings,” he stated. 

Anderson Butler’s voice wavered and he teared up when he described the images mission a colleague of his, Ken Gonzales-Day, had printed. “Hang Trees” by Gonzales-Day reveals a sequence of bushes that had been utilized in violent lynchings of the native immigrant inhabitants through the Civil Rights Movement in California. 

“That really spoke to me, but it also started to make me think that these living elements of nature have a story, and at the same time, it’s like time just passes them by,” Anderson Butler stated.  

NW arts assistant teacher Damek Salazar, a colleague of Anderson Butler, linked how nature holds recollections to his personal life.  

“The aspect of trees just being around for a long time is something that, as I get older, I kind of reflect on,” Salazar stated. “There’s so many moments in my life where I’ve had specific events at specific places, and I’m like ‘There’s a part of a memory that’s sort of trapped there for me.’”  

“Silent Witnesses” is not simply an exhibition symbolizing the connection between reminiscence and nature. Anderson Butler stated he hopes this exhibition encourages individuals to sluggish their lives down a bit. 

“I feel like it’s always hard for us to look at and talk about photography because we’re so used to seeing it everywhere, and so we don’t really think about how much photographic images read into our psyche,” Anderson Butler stated. “As a culture, we need visual literacy.”