Movement is defined as the act of moving or a change or development. To move seems to be human. We migrate and move, conquer and move on. We live in the present, move towards the future and die. Our presence or being-in-the-presence changes and develops to the future or non-being-in-the-future. Death is part of life, and life is part of death. Without death, life cannot be and without death, life cannot be. I am fascinated by dead tree branches. It symbolizes movement in all of its forms. It moves your eyes along its ridges like it was a river. It changes in the sense that it becomes soil in the future. It changes from living tree to dead timber. It develops or moves toward nothing. In the dead state, it is not nothing yet, but slowly it moves towards nothing. Movement, then, is towards nothingness.
I titled this series of photographs "Movement". These dead tree branches are moving in the most literal sense of a word. They are moving from life to death, from being-present to being-non-present (or nothing). They are changing or developing into something else, ground or soil (compost). They also "show" movement metaphorically via the veins or the curves. It leads your eyes toward a point beyond the photograph itself, somewhere outside of the photograph, as if leading you toward the nothingness, the being which is not being anymore. The darkness surrounding some of the photographs attest to this feeling of being enveloped by nothingness.
Please enjoy these photographs. Maybe you won't like them. Maybe it is more art than photography. For some reason with this lens, dead tree trunks capture a specific aesthetic that "pleases" my eye. It is an old Nikon NIKKOR 50mm f/1.8 AI lens which I think comes from the 1970s. It takes extremely sharp and beautiful images. I hope you find these images aesthetically pleasing.
