Carolyn Peter is Associate Curator at the Hammer Museum in Los
Angeles. She is the author of A Letter from Japan: the Photographs of
John Swope and has contributed essays to numerous books and
catalogues including Reading California: Art, Image, and Identity,
1900-2000.
Angeles. She is the author of A Letter from Japan: the Photographs of
John Swope and has contributed essays to numerous books and
catalogues including Reading California: Art, Image, and Identity,
1900-2000.
TREE SPOTTING WITH GEORGE HAAS
Carolyn Peter
To open a portfolio of George Haas’s trees is to embark on a visual
tour of his arboreal world. I imagine the mode of transportation, in true
L.A. fashion, to be a car. George is driving, and we ride in the
passenger seat. We spend the day navigating the highways and
byways of Southern California; from time to time George stops the
car, we all hop out, and he introduces us to another tree—each one a
dear friend who has a story to tell. For Los Angelenos, this may be the
first time they have actually stopped and focused on the trees that
occupy their day-to-day lives. For those from afar, it is a fresh
opportunity to explore this quirky place. Haas’s portraits make us
pause: with humor, irony, and bluntness, his views of individual trees
reveal much about their particular surroundings and the humans with
whom they share their habitat.
Haas certainly isn’t the first artist to be interested in natural
phenomena. As long as human beings have been visually interpreting
their world, they have been drawn to the flora around them. Albrecht
Dürer painted hyper-detailed images of blades of grass; Claude
Lorraine depicted people frolicking in the shadows of larger-than-life,
leaf-laden trees. The trees in Albert Bierstadt’s paintings and Carleton
Watkins photographs of the West contributed to the overall grandeur
of their compositions. Between 1855 and 1857 Gustave Le Gray
created portraits of individual trees in the Fontainebleau forest. More
recently, Robert Adams has photographed trees in rural and urban
areas largely with the intention of drawing attention to the destruction
that humans have left in their wake. Haas brings many of these same
qualities to his work: an attention to detail, a sense of playfulness and
wonder, and an ecological concern.
Haas’s trees are situated in rural, suburban, and urban settings
throughout Southern California. They live amidst nondescript
buildings, streets, cars, and telephone wires. Though very few people
appear in the portraits, these environments have been molded by and
for humans. Their presence is marked by their ghost-like traces or the
streaked lines left by cars that have sped through Haas’s long
exposures. We are reminded that the trees’ lives are subject to
manipulations and changes. In the midst of this metropolis, human
beings choose what trees to plant, where to plant them, what shape
they will take, and even how high they will grow; the trees’ fates ride
on the whimsy of their human neighbors. In Eucalyptus #3,
Camarillo, 2002 (black-and-white p27) Haas portrays three trees
trapped between two fences that straddle a highway and a frontage
road. Palm #9, Los Angeles, 2002 (black-and-white p33) peeks over
the top of a large, boxy retail building as if to say, “I’m still here, but
for how long?” A year later this Palm might be replaced by a
microwave tower as in Microwave Tower #14 v 2, Los Angeles, 2004
(color p32). Some of Haas’s portraits, such as Cedar #14, Norwalk,
2003, (black-and-white p45), show naked, vulnerable trees that have
lost a good deal of their limbs in a seemingly brutal pruning process;
one wonders if they will ever recover.
Despite this heavy-handed control on the part of humans, many of
Haas’s trees thrive. The wise, old Live Oak #11, Thousand Oaks, 2003
(black-and-white p28) fans out beyond the frame of the composition
and metaphorically beyond its human-ordered sphere. In Cypress #9,
Simi Valley, 2003 (black-and-white p23), a gaggle of trees huddles
together to decide the fates of the dwarfed houses below them. These
flourishing trees beg the question: can humans fully reign over
nature? With all of our attempts to confine them, the trees still find
ways to survive.
In Haas’s portraits, the trees are the stars of the composition.
Everything else takes on a secondary role, particularly in the black
and white series. The trees are the primary living beings in the
photographs, each with a distinct personality. Stand-ins for humans,
they take on anthropomorphic characteristics. Their individual
expressions are as varied as those of the people who live with them. If
we were presented with a portfolio of portraits of people in Southern
California we could formulate impressions of a place by scrutinizing
their gestures, their physical attributes, and their dress. Haas’s trees
offer similar insight into this place. There is an exoticism in the lush
flowering trees as well as in the lithesome Palms that stretch high
above the buildings. When one turns to Haas’s color series, the
fantastical and exotic nature of this place is highlighted even more.
The fluorescent green leaves, the fire engine red flowers of the tree
on the cover [Eucalyptus #31, Hollywood Riviera, 2004], and the
delicate lavender Jacaranda flowers seem unreal. The bright warm
light that floods the trees and their surroundings adds to the
sensuality of the scenes.
Haas’s trees belie a sense of the artifice that is so prevalent in this
glamorous town. A group of highly groomed Ficus (Ficus #3, Morning
Side Park, 2002; black-and-white p32) pose in a perfect row down the
center of a street like a chorus line awaiting its musical cue. His Floss-
Silk Tree #1, North Hills, 2003 (black-and-white p21) look like aliens
from a Hollywood movie or characters from a children’s book. Elm
#10, Garden Grove, 2004 (black-and-white p44) wears one top layer
of leaves as if it were a toupee. Actually, trees in Southern California
reveal the invented nature of this place, since few are indigenous to
the desert climate. Like many of the celebrities, they have been
imported to enhance the illusion that is L.A.
Cars and their ghosts are omnipresent in Haas’s photographs; the
trees are part of a culture of cars. The fleeting automobiles act as a
counterpoint to the stationary, patient trees. In images such as Coral
Tree #1, Manhattan Beach, 2002 (black-and-white p37) a tree
struggles to survive at the intersection of two busy streets and in
Floss-Silk Tree #3 v2, Pasadena, 2004, (color p48) a small wisp of a
tree stands guard at the entrance to a highway.
As we move from picture to picture, we travel with George from town
to town and neighborhood to neighborhood in the greater Los
Angeles area. In the process we encounter the great ethnic and
economic diversity of Southern California. Perhaps the trees
themselves don’t say much about ethnicity, but by giving the names
of their neighborhoods in the titles—Koreatown, Chinatown,
Filipinotown—and by including the graphic signs in various languages,
Haas is calling our attention to the ethnic richness of L.A. In economic
terms one finds healthy, burgeoning trees in the wealthier areas such
as Thousand Oaks and Santa Monica. Yet, Haas also shows trees
thriving in the lower income sections of Los Angeles. In the end, it
seems that the well-being of an individual tree is based more upon
whether someone chooses to care for it and whether it has its own
strong will to live.
Interestingly, Haas takes the notions of control and artifice one step
further in his own artistic process. He uses film to take his
photographs, then he scans the negatives, and transfers the files to
Photoshop where he manipulates them. He sometimes uses multiple
negatives to create one image, or if he feels his composition would be
better with an extra branch here or one less bush over there, he
essentially becomes a digital gardener who prunes or plants with the
click of a mouse. He hasn’t created an entirely new world, he has only
tweaked it. Like a painter who chooses to portray his sitter in a
flattering manner, Haas carefully edits his works, and in the process,
controls and directs his viewers’ focus.
After having taken George’s tree tour, one does see a little differently.
Out and about on the streets of L.A., I find myself LOOKING at the
trees and wishing I could actually talk to them. What stories could
they tell? What things have they seen? What lives have they watched
go by? I think about how we humans have tried to determine their
destinies and how they have, at times, outsmarted us and have found
their own modes of expression and growth. Whether
out in the world or in one of Haas’s photographs, the trees and the
humans are partners in a dance; they cohabitate and collaborate in a
creative existence. Somehow this all makes me feel hopeful for both
species.
Carolyn Peter
To open a portfolio of George Haas’s trees is to embark on a visual
tour of his arboreal world. I imagine the mode of transportation, in true
L.A. fashion, to be a car. George is driving, and we ride in the
passenger seat. We spend the day navigating the highways and
byways of Southern California; from time to time George stops the
car, we all hop out, and he introduces us to another tree—each one a
dear friend who has a story to tell. For Los Angelenos, this may be the
first time they have actually stopped and focused on the trees that
occupy their day-to-day lives. For those from afar, it is a fresh
opportunity to explore this quirky place. Haas’s portraits make us
pause: with humor, irony, and bluntness, his views of individual trees
reveal much about their particular surroundings and the humans with
whom they share their habitat.
Haas certainly isn’t the first artist to be interested in natural
phenomena. As long as human beings have been visually interpreting
their world, they have been drawn to the flora around them. Albrecht
Dürer painted hyper-detailed images of blades of grass; Claude
Lorraine depicted people frolicking in the shadows of larger-than-life,
leaf-laden trees. The trees in Albert Bierstadt’s paintings and Carleton
Watkins photographs of the West contributed to the overall grandeur
of their compositions. Between 1855 and 1857 Gustave Le Gray
created portraits of individual trees in the Fontainebleau forest. More
recently, Robert Adams has photographed trees in rural and urban
areas largely with the intention of drawing attention to the destruction
that humans have left in their wake. Haas brings many of these same
qualities to his work: an attention to detail, a sense of playfulness and
wonder, and an ecological concern.
Haas’s trees are situated in rural, suburban, and urban settings
throughout Southern California. They live amidst nondescript
buildings, streets, cars, and telephone wires. Though very few people
appear in the portraits, these environments have been molded by and
for humans. Their presence is marked by their ghost-like traces or the
streaked lines left by cars that have sped through Haas’s long
exposures. We are reminded that the trees’ lives are subject to
manipulations and changes. In the midst of this metropolis, human
beings choose what trees to plant, where to plant them, what shape
they will take, and even how high they will grow; the trees’ fates ride
on the whimsy of their human neighbors. In Eucalyptus #3,
Camarillo, 2002 (black-and-white p27) Haas portrays three trees
trapped between two fences that straddle a highway and a frontage
road. Palm #9, Los Angeles, 2002 (black-and-white p33) peeks over
the top of a large, boxy retail building as if to say, “I’m still here, but
for how long?” A year later this Palm might be replaced by a
microwave tower as in Microwave Tower #14 v 2, Los Angeles, 2004
(color p32). Some of Haas’s portraits, such as Cedar #14, Norwalk,
2003, (black-and-white p45), show naked, vulnerable trees that have
lost a good deal of their limbs in a seemingly brutal pruning process;
one wonders if they will ever recover.
Despite this heavy-handed control on the part of humans, many of
Haas’s trees thrive. The wise, old Live Oak #11, Thousand Oaks, 2003
(black-and-white p28) fans out beyond the frame of the composition
and metaphorically beyond its human-ordered sphere. In Cypress #9,
Simi Valley, 2003 (black-and-white p23), a gaggle of trees huddles
together to decide the fates of the dwarfed houses below them. These
flourishing trees beg the question: can humans fully reign over
nature? With all of our attempts to confine them, the trees still find
ways to survive.
In Haas’s portraits, the trees are the stars of the composition.
Everything else takes on a secondary role, particularly in the black
and white series. The trees are the primary living beings in the
photographs, each with a distinct personality. Stand-ins for humans,
they take on anthropomorphic characteristics. Their individual
expressions are as varied as those of the people who live with them. If
we were presented with a portfolio of portraits of people in Southern
California we could formulate impressions of a place by scrutinizing
their gestures, their physical attributes, and their dress. Haas’s trees
offer similar insight into this place. There is an exoticism in the lush
flowering trees as well as in the lithesome Palms that stretch high
above the buildings. When one turns to Haas’s color series, the
fantastical and exotic nature of this place is highlighted even more.
The fluorescent green leaves, the fire engine red flowers of the tree
on the cover [Eucalyptus #31, Hollywood Riviera, 2004], and the
delicate lavender Jacaranda flowers seem unreal. The bright warm
light that floods the trees and their surroundings adds to the
sensuality of the scenes.
Haas’s trees belie a sense of the artifice that is so prevalent in this
glamorous town. A group of highly groomed Ficus (Ficus #3, Morning
Side Park, 2002; black-and-white p32) pose in a perfect row down the
center of a street like a chorus line awaiting its musical cue. His Floss-
Silk Tree #1, North Hills, 2003 (black-and-white p21) look like aliens
from a Hollywood movie or characters from a children’s book. Elm
#10, Garden Grove, 2004 (black-and-white p44) wears one top layer
of leaves as if it were a toupee. Actually, trees in Southern California
reveal the invented nature of this place, since few are indigenous to
the desert climate. Like many of the celebrities, they have been
imported to enhance the illusion that is L.A.
Cars and their ghosts are omnipresent in Haas’s photographs; the
trees are part of a culture of cars. The fleeting automobiles act as a
counterpoint to the stationary, patient trees. In images such as Coral
Tree #1, Manhattan Beach, 2002 (black-and-white p37) a tree
struggles to survive at the intersection of two busy streets and in
Floss-Silk Tree #3 v2, Pasadena, 2004, (color p48) a small wisp of a
tree stands guard at the entrance to a highway.
As we move from picture to picture, we travel with George from town
to town and neighborhood to neighborhood in the greater Los
Angeles area. In the process we encounter the great ethnic and
economic diversity of Southern California. Perhaps the trees
themselves don’t say much about ethnicity, but by giving the names
of their neighborhoods in the titles—Koreatown, Chinatown,
Filipinotown—and by including the graphic signs in various languages,
Haas is calling our attention to the ethnic richness of L.A. In economic
terms one finds healthy, burgeoning trees in the wealthier areas such
as Thousand Oaks and Santa Monica. Yet, Haas also shows trees
thriving in the lower income sections of Los Angeles. In the end, it
seems that the well-being of an individual tree is based more upon
whether someone chooses to care for it and whether it has its own
strong will to live.
Interestingly, Haas takes the notions of control and artifice one step
further in his own artistic process. He uses film to take his
photographs, then he scans the negatives, and transfers the files to
Photoshop where he manipulates them. He sometimes uses multiple
negatives to create one image, or if he feels his composition would be
better with an extra branch here or one less bush over there, he
essentially becomes a digital gardener who prunes or plants with the
click of a mouse. He hasn’t created an entirely new world, he has only
tweaked it. Like a painter who chooses to portray his sitter in a
flattering manner, Haas carefully edits his works, and in the process,
controls and directs his viewers’ focus.
After having taken George’s tree tour, one does see a little differently.
Out and about on the streets of L.A., I find myself LOOKING at the
trees and wishing I could actually talk to them. What stories could
they tell? What things have they seen? What lives have they watched
go by? I think about how we humans have tried to determine their
destinies and how they have, at times, outsmarted us and have found
their own modes of expression and growth. Whether
out in the world or in one of Haas’s photographs, the trees and the
humans are partners in a dance; they cohabitate and collaborate in a
creative existence. Somehow this all makes me feel hopeful for both
species.
