One Year Portrait
One Year Portrait shows a series of black and white photos of a copper beech (Fagus sylvatica ‘Atropunicea’) growing on the yard outside my apartment in Oslo. Through the kitchen window, for one year, from June 2015 to June 2016, I have taken one picture approximately once a week. One Year Portrait is both a nature study and a portrait series that explores the transformation of nature through the seasons, ideas of animism and issues concerning the portrait. The work focuses on change, growth and cycles, reflecting the circle of the year and the unfolding of time. It shows a non-human being as an individual, and the presence of nature in the city.
The portrait presupposes a subject, and in One Year Portrait the subject is a copper beech.
By focusing on this one specific tree and taking its picture regularly over a year, it eventually appears as a complete individual. It has an expression that changes from day to day;
how it grows, blooms, sheds its leaves and enters the stage of dormancy; how wind, rain, snow and sun changes the tree through the days and the seasons. By concentrating on this one tree, it reveals a distinct personality:
A gentle giant living outside my kitchen window, expressing itself in countless ways.