Clodhoppers

"In the Time of Trees" is a photo essay by Magnum photographer Stuart Franklin, who has spent ten years photographing trees around the world. The title of the essay eerily anticipates a tree-less future, although the misquotation from Aldo Leopold subtitling one image suggests that Franklin is also asking the viewer to enter into the growth rhythms of his subjects, as Leopold famously did. The quotation should in fact read: "Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how. To plant a pine, for example, one need be neither god nor poet; one need only own a shovel. By virtue of this curious loophole in the rules, any clodhopper may say: Let there be a tree - and there will be one." (A Sand County Almanac, Oxford University Press, (1949) 2001). Leopold's account of planting and observing, "Pines Above the Snow," is a warm and humorous attempt to convey the wisdom of the trees. To modern tastes the author's approach relies rather heavily on anthropomorphic interpretations of tree growth and survival, but his understanding of the efficiency and adaptability of the pines, and his ability to observe their interactions with local flora and fauna are fascinating. Inevitably, Leopold creates a kind of growth ring of his own, in that his account of trees in the early 1940s is marked by awareness both of the economic depression that preceded this period, and the war that was to follow it. A Sand County Almanac, published posthumously, is above all an account of respect - for clodhoppers, pines, shovels and more.