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With this series of images, I am exploring our utilitarian relationship
to the the tree. When we buy lumber to build a home, a chair or a deck,
we, de facto, hire a logger to go into the woods and cut down the trees
for us. We are all connected and responsible to our forests in this
cycle of trees, lumber and homes.
In the last decade or so, huge changes have come to the rural famiies
who work in the woods. Many of these logging families go back three
and four generations. Some loggers working today have grandfathers who
fell timber with handsaws and axes. With the new robotic machinery,
one feller buncher machine replaces six men with chainsaws. The operator
sits in a climate controlled cab operating joysticks and foot pedals.
These operators never break a sweat, never climb a hill, and they are
surrounded by metal, grease and oil instead of trees, forest humus and
the sweet fragrance of freshly oozing tree sap.
Like Darius Kinsey, the photographer of a hundred years ago, I am gathering
portraits and oral histories of todays' logger. As we move into a new
era, we need to learn from these visual, verbal and visceral expressions
of todays' logger and to have them preserved for our future reference.
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