Jamie Torrance is a professional photographer who has developed commercial and personal projects for clients on both sides of the Atlantic. I did a short interview with Jamie Torrance to ask him why he took the photos of singular trees in response to Anthropocene.
In response he explained how he was influenced by the photographer Edward Burtynsky who is a landscape photographer who focuses on the increasing development of industrialization and its impacts on nature and the human existence. As Torrance went to the same university as Burtynsky, he felt that he wanted to carry on his legacy of Anthropocene photography. He decided to take photos of trees as he believed that big projects can be lost in translation and that by the time you understand the image it wouldn’t be as effective towards daily life.
Jamie Torrance did a project of 12 images where he would find trees and what impact has happened around them such as the shed that was built up next to the tree showing the relationship between humans and nature. The trees that he chose which were bare as he wanted them to have a dead skeleton look which was helpful as in Canada the winters are long so the trees don’t grow leave until later. As trees grow their leaves back he wanted people to think “If we leave this alone, it will grow back” which is a good way of thinking of Anthropocene as if we just leave the planet alone and stop polluting it with plastic and gases then it will come back the way it is supposed to be.
Image Analysis
The photographer used a wide lens as with the tree image with the bench it had other trees next to it but the wide lens pushed it further away cropping out the other trees. The photographer must have used a high shutter speed as the image has lots of sun light coming in but not too much that image is overpowered by the brightness.
The view point of this image can be seen as an average height of a man, with the leading eye to the centre of the image at the front where the tree is then leading up to the tree in the centre of the image. Even with the grass texture in the centre going in towards the tree with the smooth road either side of the tree leading into the centre.
This image was taken in Toronto in between two roads that wanted to cut down the yet locals protested to keep it as the tree is very old and means a lot to them. So they had to build the road around the tree. But what is ironic is that the ministry of transports is opposite the tree which adds comedy to this simple image of a tree and yet has a story behind it.
Photo Shoot Plan
